Last Night at the Blue Angel

by Rebecca Rotert

  What?

  You said, “Gla, gla, gla.” He rolls his eyes around and waves his arms in front of him like a baby.

  He puts out his cigarette. May I please go back to sleep now?

  CHAPTER 3

  WHY ISN’T YOUR homework done? asks Sister Eye while the other kids are out on the playground.

  I don’t know.

  Is Mama okay? she asks.

  I nod.

  Is there something you’re not understanding?

  I shrug.

  Sister Eye sighs. She puts her hand on my head.

  We had sleepovers all weekend, I say, trying to come up with something.

  Who?

  Jim last night. Some lady Saturday night.

  I see, says Sister.

  Don’t be mad.

  I’m not, peanut. She looks at the clock. Let’s work on your math for just a few minutes and then you can go outside for the rest of recess.

  I want to stay with you.

  You spend an awful lot of time with adults, she says, erasing the board.

  Did you give me my name? I love this story. I could hear it a hundred times.

  Yes, she says. Your mother wanted to call you Pearl. She picks up bits of paper along the aisles. “Let’s call her Sophia,” I said. And Jim was there. He said, “Much better,” and Rita said, “I’ll say.”

  We always laugh at that part.

  Why did you want to call me that? I ask.

  Sophia was the name of my friend. She was smart and strong and a leader. She always knew exactly who she was.

  She sits in front of me and folds her hands on my desk. I’ve known Sister Eye my whole life. And Rita. We all used to live together when we were poor. They’re my best friends.

  After all the kids are settled back in after recess, we bow our heads and say the Acts of Faith, Hope, and Love. When we’re done, Sister says, Please take out a clean sheet of paper. But just then the civil defense drill siren sounds and we all get into balls under our desks. I cross my fingers and hope it’s just practice. There are so many things not on my list. I just know it.

  Sister Eye and Jim talk when we get out. It was Sister’s idea for Jim to start picking me up from school. Because Mama can be forgetful, was what she told me. And Jim is always on time. He says punctuality is one of the few things a man can control.

  He takes me all the way up to the apartment. He says it’s so he can be sure I’m safe.

  Oh, good, you’re home! Mother says when we walk in. She’s wearing a white dress with yellow and red flowers on it and a red apron. The Good Mom Costume, she calls it.

  She talks while she walks to the coffee table in the main room. The funniest thing happened today. I was just minding my own business and the postman shows up with a delivery. Look. She lifts a blue dress from a giant box on the floor. The dress is the color of sky with navy beading and silver sequins. Isn’t it the most delicious thing you’ve ever seen?

  I step toward it. I want to touch it but I don’t want to get it dirty.

  Jim shrugs. Nice dress.

  Well, the peculiar thing is this, she says, handing Jim a small, square card.

  “Wear it tonight,” Jim reads. He turns the card over to see if anything’s written on the back.

  Who on earth could it be? she asks.

  Jim’s eye twitches. Well, anyone actually.

  Mother glances at him like he just tried to steal her cookie. She grabs the dress, holding it to her like they’re going to dance. Then she floats down the hallway to her room, saying, We’ll have to see if it fits.

  Jim takes me into the kitchen and sits me down at the table. I want you to get to work on your homework right away. I’ll make you a snack.

  I don’t want to do my homework.

  Well, I know that. But it’s what’s going to happen.

  I’m not a child.

  Oh, yeah, he says. You’re Lady Bird Johnson. I forgot.

  I open my math book and try to look serious. Don’t be mean. It’s unbeakening.

  It’s what? says Jim.

  Unbeakening, I say with some uncertainty.

  What’s the definition of that again?

  Well, if you’re mean, and you’re a bird, your beak would fall off. For punishment.

  Jim’s eyebrows lift.

  Mom said it.

  The word is unbecoming, he says.

  That doesn’t make any sense.

  Miss Rita shows up calling Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo! down the hallway. I run to hug her.

  She takes my chin in her gloved hand and tilts my face up so she can study it. Good, she says.

  Good what? I say. It’s our little game.

  You’re still you. She bends over me. I study her face—the heavy pancake makeup, the line she draws just around the outside of her lips. Her eyelashes like little black fans. Her big twist of hair that she calls platinum instead of blond.

  You’re still Miss Rita, I tell her.

  Well, now that that’s settled, where’s your mother?

  Mother appears then in the dress. She is one curvy line after another, hugged in sparkly blue, hugged in the sky.

  What on earth? says Miss Rita, circling Mother like she’s the maypole.

  It was a gift, says Mother.

  I hate to think what ghastly favor inspired this, says Rita.

  Mother waves her hand at Rita and glances at me. For heaven’s sake.

  Was I crude? Rita asks Jim.

  But Jim isn’t listening. He’s just looking at the dress, trying not to look, looking some more.

  I have new music for you, says Rita. They sit. I know you love the old songs and God knows I do, too, but, darling, your audiences get older every night. We’re going to have to start pouring Geritol at intermission. Do you listen to the radio? “Chapel of Love”? “My Guy”?

  Mother shudders. Horrible, vulgar little songs. No talent whatsoever.

  Jim takes a picture of all of us at the kitchen table.

  All I’m suggesting is that we perk up the act a bit. Rita stands and brushes her skirt. I would say take your time but we’re not getting any younger, darling, are we?

  Rita hugs me and says, Show business is a barbaric life. Promise Miss Rita you’ll be a . . . nurse. Or a teacher like Sister!

  I promise, I say.

  She hugs me again. Usually four times. Enough that I smell like her perfume for the rest of the day. Who’s my favorite little bastard child?

  I am, I say.

  Yes you are, yes you are, she sings.

  Mother tosses the music on the table and goes back to admiring the new dress. She poses in the doorway of the kitchen. Dazzling us. Like a glove, she says, half turn to the left, half turn to the right.

  Jim lifts his camera from around his neck and shoots another picture.

  Oh, stop, she says, posing anyway just in case he shoots again. Which he does.

  How did he know my size?

  How do we know it’s a he? says Jim, and then laughs.

  Mother’s jaw clenches. She doesn’t laugh. She walks away.

  What’d I do? asks Jim.

  CHAPTER 4

  BIG DOUG SAYS the Blue Angel was once the most important jazz club downtown. All of the big shots came through this place. People with names like Billy Strayhorn and Bix Beiderbecke and Dizzy Gillespie. Everyone around here shakes their heads when they tell stories about the good old days. I don’t believe the good old days are happening anymore.

  Big Doug runs the place and says his Blue Angel was every bit as good as New York’s, maybe better. He tells Mother he’s doing his best but downtown’s going to hell. What’s a fella to do? The club is a long dark room with lots of silver chrome and tubes of blue neon along the ceiling that fizzle and blink before they go out for good. Little tables with tablecloths and tiny blue lanterns fill the room and the dark blue curtains along the walls are all pulled to the side to hide the places where they’re moth-eaten and threadbare. Behind the bar is an angel etched in glass with silver wings
. She’s looking down. I guess she doesn’t want to see what’s going on. She’s listening, says Mother. You should try it.

  The stage is raised and Bennett’s big black piano takes up half of it. Behind the stage is a hallway with a few dressing rooms and a greenroom.

  During the show, I sit on my X and try to be still. Jim is studying the audience as they file in, rubbing his mustache. I watch, too.

  Jim shakes his head and goes back to his stool. He fishes through his gear bag and becomes very focused on his camera.

  Mother takes the stage and the blue dress is amazing under the lights. Jim moves in to photograph her but instead he just stares. Then, like he remembers why he’s there, he takes a shot.

  I lean forward and look at the first row. That’s when I see the man at table A-5 for the first time. He’s tall. Dark suit. Light blue tie. Cuff links. I try to figure out what’s different about him. I look at the other men and women. It’s how he looks at her that’s different. It reminds me of the boys at recess burning ants with a magnifying glass.

  Jim hooks a finger into the waistband of my pants and drags me by my butt back onto the X.

  We have an agreement, he says.

  I know.

  He puts his hands on his thighs. You don’t want the audience to see you. It will distract them. They came to see your ma, not you. Not me neither.

  Sorry.

  What’s out there that you have to see so bad, huh?

  That man there, I say.

  Where?

  The man at A-5.

  Jim squints.

  Mother feels pretty in the new blue dress. She’s using her arms a lot, turning her upper body this way and that, winking, finger shaking, hand on hip, and so on. At one point she closes her eyes and lets a note fill the house, then become soft. It’s like she trusts you enough to close her eyes. Like she knows you’re not going to hurt her. Or leave her.

  When she lets go of the last note, pulling her arms slowly into her sides, she notices the man at A-5, and for a moment, her stage-face goes away. She rushes into the wings.

  Bennett watches her leave, smiles at the crowd, and begins a little tune on the piano.

  Miss Hill, we’ve got four more songs before intermission, says Steve.

  Intermission is now. She runs to her dressing room.

  The crowd claps and starts up its conversations again, its clanking of glasses and shuffling of chairs. Except for A-5, alone at his table, who sits there in his own silence and waits.

  Mother returns several minutes later. We’ll start here, she says to Steve, pointing to his list of cues.

  Yes, ma’am, he says.

  The show is back on but Mother cannot seem to find her footing. She’s either rushing ahead of the accompaniment or lagging behind it.

  Take it easy, kid, Bennett says, just loud enough for her to hear.

  She forgets the words a few times, inverts verses, and then gets lost.

  When the show is done, the crowd claps happily. But no encore.

  Think they liked it! I tell Mother.

  They’re being polite, she says, flying past me and heading straight for her room before I can catch her.

  I look in the audience for A-5 but he’s gone. Just a few dollar bills on his table.

  Jim takes me by the hand. Come to the greenroom with us. Big Doug bought us sandwiches.

  I have to ask Mother.

  Already did. She said it’s fine. Take this will you? He hands me his tripod.

  I sling it over my shoulder and carry it to the greenroom. It’s one of his tricks, sticking me with his gear.

  We get our sandwiches and sit in the greenroom. Somebody plugs in the old Zenith and we pull our chairs around to watch Johnny Carson. He stands in the center aisle in the audience reading questions from little white cards in his hands. His microphone cord trails behind him on the carpeted stairs like a pet snake. I laugh when the guys laugh. Johnny Carson acts like he doesn’t know what’s so funny. Neither does Jim, who looks at the television but doesn’t seem to be watching it. Usually he has a good time with the crew. They’re good people, he always says.

  I finish my grilled cheese, drop my paper plate with its slippery yellow stain into the trash, and start to make my way through the maze of the lower level toward Mother’s dressing room, but Jim scrambles after me.

  Hey, he says, Where you going?

  Mom’s room.

  But Carson’s going to have those monkeys on.

  I don’t care about monkeys. I want to be with Mother.

  Come on, kid. Come back with us for just a little while longer.

  I wave at him and run to her room.

  The door is locked. I put my ear to it and don’t hear anything. I walk to the end of the hallway. The walls are concrete painted pink and the floor is concrete as well but smooth, the color of a blackboard. Nothing could get you back here, not even the bomb. I’m pretty sure.

  I try another door. It’s open. I turn on the lights. It’s like Mother’s dressing room but smaller.

  Before the bulbs get hot, I unscrew all but every third one. This is how Mother does it; it cuts down on the heat and, as she says, keeps her face from melting.

  There’s an abandoned smock draped over a metal chair. Pepto-Bismol pink with snaps along the shoulder, worn to protect costumes from hairspray and pancake foundation. A sign posted by the door reads: WHEN YOU ARE IN COSTUME DO NOT: SMOKE, EAT, ROUGHHOUSE, GO OUT OF DOORS, RUN, SIT ON THE FLOOR. ALSO DO NOT: FORCE ZIPPERS, LACING, HOOK-AND-EYES, OR SNAPS. PLEASE REPORT ANY DAMAGE TO COSTUME SHOP IMMEDIATELY SO THAT SITUATION IS NOT MAKE WORSE. This has to be Hilda’s sign. Her English gets bad when she’s worried.

  I sit at the vanity and look in the mirror. I don’t usually look at myself because I’m busy looking at Mother all the time, her beauty crashing over me. It makes you not want to look at your ordinary self. Your red haywire hair. Your round moon face. Your four million freckles and your buckteeth. Eyelashes and eyebrows so pale you can’t see them. I lean in close. Turns out I even have freckles on my lips.

  You’re the type a girl turns pretty overnight, Jim said once, after hearing Paul call me Howdy Doody after school.

  I get up and lay the smock on the floor. The globe lights warm the small room and I fall asleep curled up on the smock.

  When I wake up, it takes awhile to figure out where I am. Steve is shouting, Sophia! And I can hear Jim and Mother fighting.

  Sophia, Steve calls. From a distance I hear Jim. He’s saying, It IS your life. YOUR life. And SO am I and so is EVERYONE here. We are ALL YOUR LIFE.

  I’m facing the door when Steve opens it. He drops down to his haunches so he can hug me face-to-face. I was worried. We couldn’t find you.

  I was in here, I say.

  I see that.

  We stand there a minute before turning out the lights and leaving the small, warm room.

  Mother runs down the hallway, allowing her robe to fly open, showing her peach-colored bra and garter belt. The elastic of her garters is shot and knocks against her bare legs as she rushes toward me looking like a giant butterfly. Almost sliding into me, she squats and grabs me by the arms, shaking me. Her hair is down and there’s mascara under her eyes.

  God damn it, she shouts. God damn it, Sophia. What were you thinking? God damn it.

  Enough now, says Steve.

  This is not your affair, she says, standing up and facing him, trying to make herself tall.

  I get away from her and run. I’m wearing my tennis shoes. She’s wearing little heels and can’t catch me, but Jim does.

  Let’s all just slow down, he says as we walk back to Mother’s dressing room.

  Damn it, she shouts from behind us. A moment alone! One moment! She storms into the bathroom. I need to collect myself. The doors swing shut behind her.

  I think of my Tugboat Annie puzzle. All the parts it takes to make Tugboat Annie Tugboat Annie. Mother in the bathroom, collecting all her parts.

  I open the door to M
other’s dressing room and A-5 is sitting on the chaise. He gets up. He has tan skin and dark whiskers, and when he stands, he’s tall as a tree.

  And who are you? asks Jim.

  A friend, he says. He tugs at his pants just above his knees and lowers his body down to squat in front of me.

  Hello, doll, he says.

  I look at him. I don’t let go of Jim.

  Quite a head of hair you got there, he says, touching my head. I step out of his reach.

  He studies me, turning a cigarette in his long fingers.

  You locked me out, I tell him.

  I realize that now. I’m awful sorry.

  You should probably be going, says Jim.

  A-5 doesn’t look at him.

  Can you forgive me? he asks.

  I don’t even know you.

  The girls are tired, says Jim.

  A-5 stands, nods. You look out for them?

  Jim glares at him over the top of his glasses.

  A-5 puts on his coat and lifts his hat from Mother’s vanity. He places it carefully on his head and stares at me. Then he smiles.

  What are you looking at? I ask.

  Sophia, says Jim.

  It’s all right. I’m just glad to meet you is all, says A-5.

  I nod. I don’t look at him until he’s left and then I scramble into the hallway to watch him leave. He walks like there’s all the time in the world.

  I stand in the hallway a long time after he’s left. Finally I turn into the dressing room and put my books in my bag. I wrap my scarf around my neck; the neck must always be covered, Mother says.

  Jim looks at the room through the top of the camera and takes two pictures. I try to see what he sees but all I see is Mother’s usual mess.

  Jim gathers a few of her items from the counter—her hairbrush, her song folder, her watch—and places them in her big leather duffel. He lifts her gray trousers off the floor, shakes them, and drapes them over the back of her chaise. He turns her sweater right side out and sets it on the trousers, finds her socks, unrolls them, and places them on her shoes. There’s something small on the floor, which he picks up, crumples, and throws in the wastepaper basket. His slowness makes me sleepy.

  Behind me stands Mother, leaning in the doorframe. She smiles. A little detective work? For old time’s sake?