by Amy Stewart
Norma managed her own version of a polite smile and rose from her chair. “Thank you, Mr. Bernstein. You’ve made some awfully fine points that my sister and I hadn’t considered until now. It was good of you to take the time to put it before us so clearly. Would you mind walking us downstairs? I’m afraid I might lose my way.”
He jumped to his feet, the pipe bobbing between his teeth. “My pleasure! It was a delight meeting you both. I only wish every worried sister or aunt or mother would come and speak to me before they go chasing after their girls. It’s no trouble at all to set them straight, as you now understand.”
He came around the desk and held his elbows out so that they might walk out the way they walked in. Norma waited until they were across the hall and halfway down the stairs before she said, “My handbag!”
She turned and ran back up the stairs.
“The door’s unlocked!” he called after her. Then, turning to Constance, he said, “Does she need any help?”
“She’ll be fine,” Constance answered. “Are you down here in Leonia because of the moving picture business? There seems to be a new studio opening every week.”
That was all the encouragement Freeman Bernstein needed to deliver a lecture on the advantages of motion pictures over stage acting and the lucrative possibilities for a manager like himself who could put actresses and dancers before the camera, which was to say nothing of prizefighters, war heroes, dogs with special talents, lady deputies, miniature men, and any other human oddity or public figure of note.
This brought him back to the idea of putting Constance in the pictures. “Why, just imagine what audiences would make of a girl chasing a bank robber down the street and making an arrest! It’ll be the most thrilling stunt to ever happen in a theater. Of course, if we want to make a successful picture of it, the girl would have to marry the bank robber. Or—well, she could marry the police chief, or the sheriff, or whoever put her in the job to begin with. That sounds about right. No, I like it better if she marries the crook. Have you ever thought about that, Miss Kopp? Marrying one of them? After they get themselves straightened out, of course. Or maybe it works out that the crook wasn’t really the crook after all. Maybe the girl arrests the wrong man, and when she finds out, she feels so bad about it that she falls in love with him, and they get married. How do you like that? ‘The Wrong Man.’ That’s what we’ll call it.”
Constance wouldn’t have been able to take much more of that, but fortunately she didn’t have to. Norma’s footsteps came down the hall, and soon she was back in the stairway, her handbag tucked under her arm, and a barely concealed look of satisfaction on her face.
34
THINKING THAT MR. BERNSTEIN might get suspicious and demand to look inside her handbag, Norma had instead secreted the sheet of paper into her bosom. But he’d been too bewitched by his idea for a picture about a lady cop who marries the crook to notice. “I’ve got a better title!” he shouted as they walked away. “We’ll call it ‘Captured!’ Subtitle: ‘She Captured His Heart.’”
Once they were around the corner, Norma extracted the handbill and looked over the cities listed. “She’s in Scranton tonight. I don’t think we’ll make it in time. We should go directly on to Bethlehem and meet her there.”
Constance took the bill from her. At the top was a familiar slogan: “Pretty, Vivacious, & Versatile! May Ward and Her Eight Dresden Dolls—The Most Elaborate Girl Act in Vaudeville, Employing Beautiful Costumes and Special Scenery.” Below that was a list of cities, dates, and theaters. After Bethlehem came Allentown, Harrisburg, and Pittsburgh, followed by a list of stops in Maryland and Washington, before turning north again to Philadelphia and back to New York City.
“We’ll get her before she leaves Pennsylvania,” Norma said.
“‘Get her’?” They’d reached the train station by then. Constance looked over the timetable while Norma folded the bill and tucked it away in her handbag.
“Well, isn’t that why we’re going?” Norma said. “To find her and bring her home?”
“I don’t remember agreeing to go anywhere. We know where she is now, and we have assurances that she’s safe. We could write to her in care of the theaters in any one of those cities if we wanted to. We might even be able to put a telephone call through.”
Norma snorted. “You’re not seeing the situation clearly, which doesn’t surprise me at all, because you’ve always been blind to trouble where Fleurette is concerned. Mr. Bernstein has shown us what kind of man he is.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“He took one line out of a newspaper article about you and tried to turn it into cheap entertainment. He’d put his own mother on stage, if he could rent the theater at a discount and sell tickets for a quarter.”
“But what do we expect Fleurette to do if we turn up at the theater, in front of Mrs. Ward and all the other girls, and insist on bringing her home? Is there any possibility that she’ll be glad to see us? Could you imagine her coming along willingly? And how do I explain that I’m allowed to go wherever I want, and to do as I please, even if that means wrestling with a criminal, but she can’t stand on a stage and sing a song?”
“You don’t do as you please. You’re being paid to do a job. You follow orders. Anyone would agree that your work is thoroughly unpleasant and should be making you miserable, and probably will, once you’ve been at it long enough.”
Norma had a maddening way of derailing a conversation. Constance wondered suddenly if she’d ever had a straightforward talk with Norma about anything. She couldn’t recall one.
“Never mind about me,” Constance said. “We must think about what we’re doing.”
“I’ve already thought about it. You’re the one who can’t make up her mind.”
It was true; she couldn’t. She had half a mind to grab Fleurette by the collar and drag her home, and the other half—well, she still wanted to grab her by the collar, but she told herself that she knew better, and that it wouldn’t do any good.
“The minute we turn up, it’s over,” Constance said. “Fleurette won’t forgive us for it. We’d better be certain, and I’m not.”
Norma dropped onto a bench along the platform and folded her arms across her chest. “I said I don’t like that man.”
“Yes, you did.”
“There’s something untrustworthy about him.”
“So you’ve observed.”
“I know I’ve heard his name before, in connection with some scandal or another.”
“I’m surprised you don’t remember.”
“I will.”
“Until you do, I think we ought to stop and ask ourselves the question: Are we prepared to follow Fleurette around for the rest of her life and disapprove of everything she does, or are we going to behave like modern women and let her go her own way?”
“I suppose you’re the expert on how modern women behave.”
“Well, I know I’m expected back at work. Is that modern enough for you?”
The train arrived and Norma swept her arm toward it. “Go on, then.”
35
NORMA BOARDED A NORTHBOUND train and Constance took a rickety little trolley down to Fort Lee to see about Minnie Davis’s landlord. The trolley rolled along at such a maddeningly leisurely pace that she wished she’d walked. She’d had to squeeze herself into a narrow wicker-work seat meant for a much smaller person, which made for an unpleasant ride, and she fumed over her predicament the whole way.
While it was true that Constance was furious at Fleurette for going away, she was mostly furious at her for going away at that particular moment. Had she only run off a week earlier—or, who knows, a week later—Constance felt she would’ve been able to think clearly about it. But she was unsettled over the Minnie Davis case and the uncomfortable truth that Minnie had tried to keep from her. Was Fleurette hiding something, too?
It was obvious that Fleurette felt emboldened to go away precisely because of the kinds of cases Constanc
e had been struggling with at work. Constance tried to think back over what she might’ve said about them in Fleurette’s presence.
She was fairly certain she’d delivered a lengthy speech about how petty and selfish it had been of Mrs. Heustis to try to keep Edna at home, and what a mockery she’d made of the police and courts by involving them in a family matter. (Had she really said that, and then gone running to Sheriff Heath the minute Fleurette disappeared? She had.)
It seemed that she also had sharp words for Mr. and Mrs. Davis, and she felt the need to repeat them at home. Fleurette must have been terribly emboldened to hear that Constance believed it to be Mr. and Mrs. Davis’s own fault for driving young Minnie away.
Constance also might have said that if the Davises couldn’t offer Minnie some kind of life that satisfied her, they deserved to lose her.
Yes, she definitely said something along those lines.
Who, then, could blame Fleurette for thinking that she had every right to accept the very role for which, as Sheriff Heath pointed out, she did audition, with the full knowledge and consent of her guardians?
Did Constance ever once voice an objection to her auditioning, or to accepting the role—on the unlikely chance that there really was a role, and it was offered to her?
She did not.
There seemed no rational reason, then, for Constance to be alarmed over Fleurette’s new venture, or to go chasing after her. She probably shouldn’t, in hindsight, have gone to interrogate Freeman Bernstein, although she did have some obligation to make sure Fleurette was, in fact, with the company.
But the trouble was that she couldn’t separate her worries over Fleurette from the outright state of alarm she’d been thrown into at the reformatory. Seeing Minnie sent away so abruptly, and hearing at last the hurried confession that she’d suspected all along—all of this had her worked into such a nervous state that she hardly knew where Minnie’s situation ended and Fleurette’s began.
Constance stepped off the streetcar in Fort Lee and found the bakery where she’d first seen Minnie. She stood across the street and looked up at the little window on the second floor, which was now covered over in newspaper, perhaps to make ready for another tenant. She couldn’t help but admire Minnie for making some stab at a new life, even such a modest life as this one. As for the men who might have come in and out of that room, Minnie was right. If there were no men in evidence—no other party to accuse of a crime that took two to commit—then she deserved her freedom as much as they deserved theirs.
It was an uncertain legal argument and an even shakier moral premise, at least in the eyes of Bergen County’s elected officials, but Constance was emboldened by the idea. Her spirits surged even higher when she opened the door and breathed in the heavenly fragrance of a bakery that had not quite reached the end of the day’s operation.
Constance knew bakers to keep early hours and was relieved to find Minnie’s landlord, Mr. Elliott, still there. Apparently one of the ovens had failed, and he was pounding at it with a wrench in between groans and curses.
The other oven worked just fine, and a late batch of popovers had just come out. A girl behind the counter sold her two, with powdered sugar. She took them in a little brown bag and tried not to think about the cloud of steam that would be released if she bit into one right at that moment, before they were allowed to cool. There was nothing like a popover directly out of the oven.
But that would have to wait. When she told the girl that she needed to see Mr. Elliott on sheriff’s business, he threw down his wrench and came over. He looked every bit the part of a baker: rotund and heavy around the shoulders, with massive hands that knew how to pound down a rising loaf of dough or punish an errant oven. He seemed a little gruff about the interruption and guessed right away the nature of her business.
“You know that girl left without paying the rent,” he said by way of greeting. He stood behind the counter, wiping his hands on his apron.
“She can hardly pay it now. She’s behind bars.”
“Deserves it.”
“I understand you’ve agreed to testify against her. I take it you’ve spoken to someone at the prosecutor’s office.”
“Course I have. I want my rent money.”
Constance feigned regret. “Oh dear. I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed. This isn’t a case about the rent, and you won’t get paid.”
“What do you mean, I won’t get paid? I’m going to tell the judge —”
“It’s a morality charge. I can assure you that the proceedings have nothing to do with the payment of rent. You’d have to speak to your city clerk about that.” Constance didn’t know who one might speak to about collecting late rent, but thought that a city clerk sounded convincing.
He snorted at that. “Well, I might as well tell the judge anyway. That girl was no good. Had a different fellow up there every night.”
“Did she? How many fellows, exactly? The judge will ask, and you’ll be under oath.”
The baker looked over at the girl behind the counter, who Constance took to be his daughter. “Go on back there and pull out those rolls.” He looked at the sack in Constance’s hand and said, “You’ll ruin them if you wait.”
“I know. But tell me first: How many men did you see? Are you going to be able to describe them?”
“Describe them? I don’t live on the premises. I only caught that one fellow because I’d come in to light the ovens.”
“Who was he?”
He shrugged. “I just saw him run out. Tony chased him down the alley. He was plenty mad.”
“What did Tony say?”
He sighed and rubbed his forehead with his sleeve. “Well, he claimed the fellow was his brother, but what do I know?”
“Exactly!” Constance said, with enormous relief. At least this part of Minnie’s story was true. “What do you know? Was the man Tony’s brother, or wasn’t he?”
She reached in the bag, unable to wait any longer.
“Aw, hell. Is that what the judge is going to ask?”
She nodded, her mouth full of powdered sugar and a flaky golden crust that almost took her mind right off her business. It made the baker smile to watch his popovers disappear.
“Well,” said Mr. Elliott, a note of resignation in his voice, “I promised I’d say my piece in court, so I suppose I’ll have to.”
When Constance was able to speak again, she said, “That’s just fine, Mr. Elliott. It’s entirely up to you. The first session starts at eight o’clock. The prosecutor will let you know what day to appear.”
“Eight? I’ve got a bakery to run! You don’t expect me to close my doors just to go tell a judge that I don’t know what I saw, do you?”
She shrugged indifferently. “Sounds like a wasted morning to me. What did you say you had coming out of the oven next?”
36
THEY WERE THE WORST POTATOES Minnie had ever seen. The skins were green, they were soft and withered, most were pitted with bruises, and all of them sprouted roots. She tried to cut away the worst bits and was left with a meager pile of white potato-flesh and a much larger mound of peels.
“Don’t let Miss Pittman see that,” Agatha said, and quickly brushed the waste into a bin.
“But we can’t be expected to eat it,” Minnie said.
“Oh, you’ll eat worse. There’s bugs in the flour. You’ll see them in your dinner rolls.”
“Agatha!” called out Esther from across the kitchen. “Don’t be like that.”
“But it’s true,” Agatha persisted. She had plump lips and a smile wider on one side than another, and she spoke with a lisp. Minnie liked her because of it. She allowed Agatha to take her by the elbow and lead her to the flour-bin, which pulled out from a cabinet in the pantry.
“See here. Bugs.” She reached in, took a handful of flour, and let it fall. Little brown bugs the size of fleas scampered to bury themselves as they landed.
Minnie believed a show of strength to be the best course
of action. “They’re only weevils. You can sift them right out and feed them to the chickens.”
“The chickens!” Agatha screeched. “You’re not a city girl, are you?”
“I wanted to be,” Minnie said, “and that’s what got me into trouble.” She went back to her potatoes and tried to be less discriminating with her knife. Agatha was scrubbing pots and Esther, the eldest and most senior resident of the state home, was boiling down ham bones for soup.
“What did get you into trouble for, exactly?” Agatha asked.
“No, let’s try to guess,” Esther said. She turned around and squinted at Minnie, as if she might divine the answer. “You ran away from home.”
“Of course she did,” Agatha said. “You don’t even need to answer that one. But then what happened? You ran away from home and you found a man to take you in.”
“He didn’t exactly take me in,” Minnie said. “I persuaded him to rent a room for the two of us.”
“Oh, that’s much worse,” Agatha said. “Don’t tell it to the judge that way.”
“That’s right,” Esther said. “You never want anything to be your idea. I’m here because I kept insisting that no one else was to blame. The judge believed me, and thought that any girl who lived such a wicked life of her own accord ought to be locked up and stripped of her inheritance.”
“You didn’t really have an inheritance, did you?” Minnie took another look at Esther and tried to picture her as the daughter of a rich man. She did have a pretty little chin and a turned-up nose, and eyes that might be made to look dramatic with a little effort. Minnie could imagine her in silk and furs.
“Ten thousand dollars would have been mine on my twenty-first birthday, but now a judge has hold of it, and I might never see it again, unless I marry the sort of man who won’t squander it.”
“What’s the point of ten thousand dollars, if not to squander it?” Minnie returned.
