Loving Liberty Levine

by Colin Falconer

  “What are their names, these more permanent positions?”

  “Wilson and Dewey.”

  “They sound like vaudeville, they should be spieling up on stage.”

  “This vaudeville act are two of the most eligible bachelors in New York. They both run banks on Wall Street.”

  Sarah pulled off her headdress, and when that was done, she had hardly anything more to change out of. She put on her step-ins and reached for her new dress. She had made it herself to save money; she told everyone it was from Bergdorf, and to her astonishment they all believed her. It had a long hem, because that was the latest thing, and was made of chiffon and silver spangles she had found in a shop on Hester Street. It was sleeveless, of course, and it had a plunging back. If her vati could see her, he’d tear out his beard with his fingernails. Well, what Vati never knew would never hurt him.

  She didn’t need much else except some bangles; she didn’t need to strap up like some of the other girls; she was a perfect shape for the new fashion. Once, no one would look at a girl if she didn’t have big bubbies. Now everyone did.

  “So what do you say?” Evie asked her.

  “I say dokeyokey, let’s do it.”

  “Good girl. And it’s okeydokey. Okeydoke?”

  It was a sweltering night on West Forty-Second Street. The usual fancy-schmancy cars were parked outside, their coachwork shining under the electric foyer lights: a mustard-yellow Rolls-Royce, a Duesenberg, a royal-blue Peugeot convertible. The doormen were shouting the owners’ names: Guggenheim, Vanderbilt, Hutton.

  Most nights Sarah charged out the door, past the hordes of men waiting there with flowers, all looking for a Ziegfeld girl to escort to a party out at Great Neck or a club on the Upper East Side.

  Tonight, as she strolled out arm in arm with Evie, she thought: Okeydoke, don’t feel so guilty, girl. Remember what Evie told you: you are still working.

  Two men in white scarves and tuxedos called to them.

  Evie waved back. “All set,” she said to them. “Sarah, this is Wilson, and this handsome gentleman is Dewey. Okay, boys. Let’s show this showgirl a good time.”

  Down dark basement stairs in an anonymous row of brownstones, from somewhere Sarah heard the faint sound of drums and a trumpet. Dewey tapped on a beat-up door, and when it opened, the noise from behind it was suddenly deafening. They crowded inside.

  The speakeasy was all red velvet curtains and ornate chandeliers and bare brick walls. The foursome was escorted to a table with two curtained-off couches and dirty white lamps with strings to turn them on and off. Wilson ordered champagne. It would just be apple cider and cost the same as Taittinger, but at least they wouldn’t end up in the hospital—Evie said the gin in some of the smaller places was pure moonshine and could kill you quicker than arsenic.

  Sarah looked around. There was a stuffed antelope head on the wall right above them, in between a raccoon and a bear wearing a bowler hat. Only in America do bears have bowler hats, she thought; in Russia, lots of bears. Never seen one with headwear.

  Straight off it was plain to her that Evie had a crush on Wilson. She claimed him first, putting her arm though his and snuggling up on the banquette. It looked like Sarah’s date was going to be Dewey. He ordered an Alexander.

  “Your friend doesn’t say much,” he said to Evie.

  “She don’t speak much English,” Evie said, which was such a big lie.

  “Where is she from?”

  “She’s Russian,” Evie said, answering for her. “Her cousin was a countess.”

  Sarah listened to this wide eyed. Her cousin milked cows and sold potatoes at the market in Tallinn, same as she did.

  “A real live countess,” Wilson said, and whistled, easier to impress than his pal Dewey, who just shrugged, like being a countess was bargain basement.

  Sarah studied their dates. Their single-breasted tuxedos had thin-notched lapels, with two buttonholes on either side held together with coat links. Wilson, who looked a lot younger than his companion, was a real goy, with fair hair and a fat money clip that he liked to show off. He looked like he bathed in banker’s drafts.

  The other one, Dewey, he didn’t say much. He was shorter and stockier, and he had wire-rimmed glasses. With his snappy little polka-dot bow tie, he looked more like a bank clerk than a bank president.

  Sarah tried to brazen it out, listened while Wilson talked about the parties they had been to out on Long Island, the fancy yachts they took sailing, and animals she had never heard of that they had shot at, tramping in the woods. She sipped her champagne and remembered Follies lessons: think about too many latkes and look like you’re too good for them.

  When they had finished their drinks, both men looked at their watches and said it was time to go to a party on the Upper East Side.

  I can’t do this, Sarah thought. I can have a bare tushy on stage every night, but this I cannot do.

  “I have to get home,” she said to Evie.

  “She talks!” Wilson shouted, laughing and nudging his companion.

  “Leave the girl alone,” Dewey said. “Maybe she’s shy.”

  Sarah pushed away from the table.

  “You’re really going?” Wilson said. “But we just got started. The night is young.”

  “Me, I’m not so young. Feels like half past four in the morning at my age.”

  “You can’t go,” Evie whispered in her ear. “Are you crazy? These are live ones.”

  “No, I have to go home.”

  “First, let’s go and see a man about a dog,” Evie said, and she led Sarah off to the powder room.

  But when they got there, there was no man and no dog. This English, Sarah thought. Every time you think you know it all, there is something else to learn.

  Evie rounded on her. “You can’t go, sugar. That Wilson, he told me he thinks you are the cat’s pajamas.”

  “He’s with you.”

  “If that’s what he wants, he’s yours. There’s plenty more fish in the sea.”

  “Evie, I don’t got no fishes, no cats. What I got is a daughter home in bed, waiting for me.”

  Evie stared at her. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a kid?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Sure it matters. If you want to land yourself a millionaire, believe me, sugar, it matters.”

  “I got to go,” Sarah said, and she went out to the street and called a cab and didn’t even say good-bye to her date. Mr. Rockefeller, she was sure he would get over it.

  23

  Ilsa, the seamstress, was fussing around her, uttering curses through a mouthful of pins, trying to get the chiffon to reveal enough of Sarah’s breast to please the audience but not too much to displease Mr. Ziegfeld. And Sarah’s headdress, it had more wire and modern engineering than the Williamsburg Bridge. Ilsa hurried to fix it to her hair, still muttering through the pins in her mouth.

  This was supposed to be my job, Sarah thought. I wonder how much she is getting for all this work, when all I have to do is stand around?

  Evie watched her in the mirror as she finished putting on her lipstick. “Pity you had to leave the other night. We had a swell time. Didn’t get home till four. Nothing like seeing the sunrise over Manhattan.”

  “I seen sunrises before. It’s like when it goes down, but the other direction.”

  “The boys wanted to know where you’d gone.”

  “I told you, Evie, I leave my daughter on her own long enough.”

  “That Wilson is sweet on you. He says he’ll be by after the show to take you to dinner.”

  “I got a date already. She’s nine years old. Don’t got a polka-dot tie, otherwise she’s perfect.”

  “How old is this kid of yours?”

  “I told you, she is nine.”

  “Don’t mind me saying, but you don’t look old enough.”

  “Where I come from, we start young.”

  “You want my advice?”

  They looked at each other in the dressing
room mirror.

  “You are a real looker, sweetheart. But looks, they don’t last forever. This kid, she’s going to spoil your chances, and when they’re gone, they’re gone.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying, don’t you have an aunt or someone you can send her to for a while? She’s going to queer your game.”

  “Gentleman caller!” one of the other girls shouted.

  They both looked up.

  “He wants Sarah!”

  Evie smiled. Sarah bit her lip.

  She got up, made her way through the racks of sequins and feathers and chiffon, clambering over hatboxes and shoes. It wasn’t easy with the headdress that Ilsa had just finished pinning—the Eiffel Tower or she didn’t know what, all in gold spangle.

  Some of the other girls looked around. She could see on their faces they were jealous. Evie was right. This was the real game for the showgirls, not the Follies.

  Wilson was waiting in the corridor, a bouquet of flowers in hand, peering in through a crack in the door, though there wasn’t much more to see that he and half of moneyed New York hadn’t already seen up there on the stage. Sarah was wearing only a chiffon wrap and her slip-ons. She forgot she was near naked until she opened the door.

  Wilson didn’t know where to look. He mumbled something at her nipples.

  She took his handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and pretended to wipe his chin. He flushed and straightened. “Did Evie tell you? I came to ask you out for dinner after the show.”

  Sarah had told little Libby that tonight she would be home early. Promised her. But then she thought: What if the show finishes tomorrow? Evie’s right, I have to find a husband, and the clock is ticking. I’m twenty-six years old. Not too many more Follies left for me.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s do it, Wilson.”

  He beamed, took one more look through the door to satisfy himself there weren’t any girls he liked better, and then left. He turned back to give her the flowers.

  “I almost forgot,” he said.

  “Mama said she would be home hours ago,” Libby said.

  She heard someone down in the alley sorting through the garbage, trying to find something to eat. She should be grateful to be up here, she thought, on the roof with her best friend, safe and with something warm in her belly.

  It was her new routine. She ate dinner with the Donnellys every night, and then played with Frankie until it was time to go to bed. She knew her mama was paying Mrs. Donnelly to look after her while she was at work, but it didn’t really feel like that. It was like having another family, and most nights now they let her sleep over on the floor next to Frankie’s bed or up on the roof, with Frankie’s brothers and sisters, where it was cooler.

  The only thing about the roof was the airshaft. You could hear everything through it; there were rats in there; the things that went down that chute was nobody’s business, as her mama liked to say. The smell that came out of it was vile, especially on muggy summer nights like this.

  They could also hear people going up and down the stairs, tripping on the torn linoleum, and there were babies crying all night long. But after a while she got used to it. She lay there next to Frankie and listened to Mr. and Mrs. Donnelly talking. Frankie’s dad was saying that Sarah was aiming to marry some rich man.

  Was she? Is that what she was doing every night when she said she was on the stage on Broadway? Is that why she would never let her go and watch?

  She wished her papa was still alive; she wished they had a family like Frankie did. She didn’t want her mama marrying some millionaire. Not having any money didn’t worry her. It was only her mama who cared about all of that.

  “Do you think she’ll leave me, Frankie?”

  “Who?”

  “My mama.”

  “Don’t be daft. She loves you, ya eejit. She’d never leave you.”

  Libby curled up on her side. She wanted to believe her. Frankie might be right, but what Libby really thought was that she was like the plain brown duck, only in reverse. Her mother was a swan, and Libby was so obviously the duck who had been found in her nest by mistake. Perhaps one day she would fly away; she was just a nuisance, and an ugly one at that.

  The Red Hen

  Wilson’s limousine pulled up outside the club, and a uniformed valet in hat and tails opened the doors for Sarah. I could get used to this, she thought. At Katz’s you just shoved the door open with your shoulder.

  She had never been to the Red Hen, and when she first walked in, she didn’t think it was so much. There were framed cartoons on the walls—she had seen better—and the tables and chairs weren’t much better than Katz’s. It was the goyim that made the difference. They looked like they owned a block of New York each.

  The men all wore tuxedos and topcoats, and the women were dripping with diamonds, all of them dressed like they were going to a coronation. She could feel them all looking at her, and she thought somehow they knew her from the show, but then she realized they were staring because she was the youngest woman there. If only they knew I have a kid nearly ten years old at home, she thought.

  The maître d’ led them to a table and delivered the menu. It had more words in it than the holy Torah. But Wilson saved her the trouble of reading it all and ordered for her.

  “We’ll have the lobster tail,” he said. “And a bottle of shampoo, please, Arnold.”

  The menu was snatched out of her hand again. Well, she didn’t mind. If Wilson was going to pay, she would eat whatever he wanted her to eat. She was never hungry after a show anyway.

  She let her shawl slip off her shoulders. Everyone was looking anyway. Give them a show like Mr. Ziegfeld always wanted. She had on a beaded tulle dress with sequined paisley, the hem a little higher than she had ever worn before. The men of course were looking at her arms and her bare back; the women all were looking at the dress.

  “That looks expensive,” Wilson said.

  “Got it today at Bergdorf,” she said.

  A lie. What if I told him it is an original Sarah Levine, she thought. Wouldn’t he be surprised then?

  There was an awkward moment. He didn’t seem to know what to say; she had already figured he liked looking at her more than he liked talking to her.

  “You’re very beautiful. Have you never been told that?”

  “Never think much about it. I suppose Mr. Ziegfeld must think so.”

  “There’s something about your face. When you’re on stage, I can’t take my eyes off you.”

  “When you have Miss Gilda Gray to look at?”

  “Not every man is looking at her, you know.” He leaned in. “You’re rather mysterious, aren’t you?”

  “Am I?”

  “Your friend Evie won’t say much, other than you’re Russian and that you have blue blood.”

  “Blue this year. Next year I’ll go with the fashion.”

  He smiled, almost like he knew it was a joke. He took out his cigarettes, a silver case with monogrammed initials: “WB.”

  “Do you like it here?”

  “It’s nothing on Katz’s.”

  “Katz’s?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Have you never been here before?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not a girl that gets out a lot.”

  “I’m sure I could show you around.”

  She wondered what that meant. He had that look on him, she thought, he was like Schonberg but without the onion breath. If I was pastrami, he’d be licking his fingers right now and already thinking about what to have for dessert.

  “My family has a house out on Long Island. You should come out.”

  “What is it you do out there, Wilson?”

  “We have a yacht. Most weekends in the summer, we go sailing out on the Sound or go on picnics. There are some rather fine parties out there. All of New York is there in the summer.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t think Mr. Ziegfeld will like it.”

  “Surely h
e can spare you for one day?”

  “If he can spare me for one day, he can spare me for a whole season is what he says.”

  “You like working for Mr. Ziegfeld?”

  “It’s okay in the summer, but I’m figuring in the winter, it could get a bit chilly. But reading the papers, I say it beats bolshevism hands down.”

  He smiled. He was one of those men, she thought. He had a way of smiling that made you feel uncomfortable, like there was something crawling on you. “You’re not really a countess, are you?”

  “If I was a countess, I wouldn’t be walking around on stage with the Eiffel Tower on my head.”

  “So what are you, then?”

  “Just a girl trying to get by.”

  “You see, I could probably help you with that.” He put his hand on her knee under the table. Where’s a hat pin when a girl needs one, she thought. “It’s hard being all alone in the world, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not alone. I got my Libby.”

  “Libby? Who’s that?”

  “She’s my daughter.”

  “You have a daughter? You don’t look old enough.”

  “That’s what Evie said. What can I say? Where I come from, you can walk, you’re old enough to get married.”

  “Where’s your husband?”

  “Not to be fancy about it, he’s in a ditch in France, last I heard.”

  “I see. I’m sorry. Evie never mentioned a daughter.”

  “Sorry about my dead husband or my daughter?”

  He called for the check and signed it. “It’s getting late,” he said.

  “No lobster?”

  “I’ve rather lost my appetite. I’ll call you a cab.”

  “I’ll call my own,” she said.

  24

  A sultry summer night a week later, and the crowd was pouring out of the theater onto the street, which was already five-deep with taxicabs. Sarah pushed through the after-show crowd, ignoring the laughter and lighted cigarettes, the men in their silk scarves and tuxedos, the women with scandalously bare arms and flashy diamond bracelets. Suddenly Wilson’s friend Dewey was behind her, waving a bouquet like a baton. He had followed her all the way from the stage-door entrance.