Dull layers she will lose again tonight.
Beneath her shoe a shade of footprint.
Proof that V was here.
[Everyone who knows the truth is dead:
V
Em
the misspelled Mr. C
V’s Norwegian seamstress mother
V’s older sisters: Ida, Lydia, and Rose
the stepfather
the judge
the doctor who delivered June.
What I have now:
Cryptic case notes left inside V’s file.
But does a file count as fact?
Or isn’t every rendering a lie?]
[Let us stop to consider the stepfather—
Occupation: Disabled railroad worker. Age 53.
Or this note from the file:
“He’s done all he can to help the girl.” ]
The Stepfather
What V hates most is his stench in their apartment. Whiskey, cigarettes, and sweat. Yellowed undershirts that reek of some dark sin. His lie that he loves V like his own daughter.
V longs to live again with only women. Poor as they were—V, her mother, and her sisters—at least V had a home. She wants the widowed years her mother raised them: boiled milk and bread for meager suppers, no drinking swearing dancing smoking, Sunday morning worship at Mindekirken Church. The black Bible always open at the bedside. An anguished Jesus in Gethsemane watching from the wall. V’s bent-backed seamstress mother sewing lavish drapes and dresses for the wealthy Kenwood women. Tailoring. Repairing. V’s mother up nights pinning fabric, or curved over that machine, working for her daughter’s decent life.
And yet she wed this man, this disabled railroad worker, to help pay for their apartment. Pay. Which means V owes the man affection in return.
Ida, Lydia, and Rose—V’s beloved sisters grown up and gone.
And V has lost her home.
And Now Among the Men
Late, V moves among the men collecting tips and tales. The longer that V listens, the more the men will pay. Addled Walt, the lonely boxer. Jean Paul, the French-Canadian, who hopped a train to nowhere and ended up in Minneapolis. V loves Jean Paul’s accent. The word “Quebec.” Pine and Queen. The dream of school children singing “Frère Jacques.” Jean Paul who turns his pockets inside out to prove to V he’s broke.
Or Ben, the widowed Baptist farmer, who carries a bottle of cheap whiskey in his coat. The good woman wouldn’t approve, he always says, ashamed. Do you?
Sure thing, V says. Ben never touches V, and he tips well.
Before the Cascade Club, V saw men on the street, imagined them with strength she didn’t possess, but now she sees so many as bruised children. Pouty. Full of want. Brutes, too, but V has always known that.
When one pulls V to his knee, she’s quick to stand. She doesn’t need to let men hold her; V can listen while they look. Hot or cold, she doesn’t want to feel their calloused hands against her legs. It’s only Mr. C’s hands she wants now. Mr. C who always has a friendly-father wink for Little Fox.
Closer to the bar she accepts a stranger’s blessing, a drunken prayer, a palm pressed to her head. V takes his nickel quickly, moves on to Soldiers’ Corner in the back end of the bar. Bill who lost his right arm to the Germans. We saved this god-damned country, one–armed Bill insists, and men salute. Now they left us hungry like some hoboes.
The ruined soldiers can’t tip well, but V still has a heart. On her breaks, V recites the soldiers’ favorite, “Remember My Forgotten Man,” and now she’s mournful Joan Blondell leaning on a lamppost. Joan Blondell, a girl as poor as V who started off in vaudeville working as a circus hand and made it as a star.
V just halfway through her number, when Sven, the young flannel- shirted Swede, tells V in a slur to make a wish. What’s this? he says, pretending to pull a penny from V’s crotch.
You can keep it, V tells Sven. Your magic and your penny. I don’t need either one.
[And why was I—
a small child without talent—
dancing at the Whirlpool,
that seedy bar off Washington
not far from where V danced?
What was I doing dancing then for tips?
At five or six or seven doing the Limbo
or the Twist to entertain old drunks.
Men with missing teeth and whiskey spit.
A small girl passed from lap to lap.
Fun June lost in conversation at the bar.
Her kids guzzling a string of kiddie cocktails.
June staying out so late we fell asleep in the back booth
with a doggie bag of ribs we ate for breakfast.
Didn’t anyone know better?
Wasn’t V on someone’s mind?
Relatives who knew the truth of V?]
Business
V mid-song is suddenly stunned silent. Three gangsters flashing guns storm the bar for Freddy Burk.
FUCK, Freddy shouts, then scrambles from his seat, tackles toward the alley exit.
Fuck, someone else repeats. Then, Freddy’s done.
Kid’s men, a stranger whispers as he pulls V toward the floor. Freddy must’ve cooked the numbers. They open fire here, we’ll all be done.
Don’t shoot me, Freddy pleads, the threat of three guns pressed against his skull.
V scrambles for a spot beneath a table, watches this dark drama from the stories that she’s clipped. Gangsters. Guns. Now V is in the story, another tragic showgirl. Tomorrow’s headline in the paper: YOUNG STAR DEAD IN NIGHTCLUB FRAY.
Her? the kids at Jefferson will say. That girl was a star?
V’s mother probably glad to have her showgirl daughter dead. V’s sisters all ashamed. Em left without a best friend in the world.
I didn’t cook nothing, Freddy weeps. Swear to God, I didn’t. You know I wouldn’t do that.
Then Mr. C, undeterred by gangsters, steps calmly from his office, lifts his gray fedora with a nod. Gentlemen, he says. His hand on Freddy’s neck. Mr. C, always the brave father; surely he can save poor Freddy now. Take him outside, please.
Freddy weak-legged, wailing, dragged howling toward the exit, begging for his life. A desperate Noooooooo that bleeds through V.
Let’s get back to business, Mr. C says. Little Fox, these good men want a dance.
After Hours
Emptied out and quiet, the Cascade is a land of make-believe for V and Em. (Homely Em is only welcome after close.) Mr. C in his back office balancing the books, calling out for songs from Little Fox. V proud to be his private singer, dancer. Em polishing the bar top, pretending that she works at the Cascade, too.
Pick your poison, Em tells V.
For V, a kiddie cocktail, ginger ale, a floating slip of orange, a maraschino cherry on a stick. For Em, a low-ball glass of whiskey mixed with Coca-Cola.
Just try, Em pleads, pressing the glass of fizzy booze to V’s closed lips.
No, V says. Em’s whiskey is the memory of V jolted out of sleep. The smell of her mother’s second husband reeking at V’s bedside. The man who won’t have a little whore inside his house.
V turns away from Em, wipes the burn of whiskey from her lips, steals another glance at Mr. C in the side office. Mr. C too clean for beer or whiskey. Mr. C with his handsome solid face; a contour line she’d like to trace with her fox tongue. His jaw, his lips, the part between his front teeth when he laughs. His face. His hands. His hands as smooth as—
V dreams the steamy summer dream that keeps her warm this winter:
V and Mr. C at Cedar Lake alone. V’s costume on the shore, her hand inside of his. The cool surprise of Cedar Lake holding their great heat. V as clean as Mr. C in that dark water. A secret midnight swim the way she always did with Em, except—
Later in the sand her wet body under his. His Little F
ox beneath him the way Em used to want to make believe with V.
A flock of wild birds beats in V’s chest.
Wait here, V says to Em, wishing Em wouldn’t be her constant shadow anymore.
At the door to his small office, V breathes in his sweet cigar and Aqua Velva, startles at the gun across his lap. You a gangster like some say? You tied up with Kid Cann?
You ever hear about the cat? he winks. Curiosity? Go play with your sidekick while I work.
You want some help counting that cash? V volunteers. V can start with counting, work forward toward the beach. I’m good for more than songs.
I bet you are, he says, sweeping the coins into a bag. Ask me when you’re older. My answer might be yes.
Mr. C: Nightclub manager. Jewish. Age 35.
[Beyond those three facts of Mr. C
there is nothing I can know about this man.
The seven spellings of his name inside V’s file,
all oddly missing from the Minneapolis City Directory and the census.
Mr. C:
Northside Jew or Southside?
Romanian or German?
Immigrant or not?
Mr. C, the “handsome Jew”
V named as “special friend.”
And what of all those strangers who asked June if she was Jewish?
Norwegian-Lutheran June with her lutefisk and lefse.
Or later, asked us if we were.
Us, a pack of Irish-Catholic kids?]
Generosity: January 1936
1.
V with the kindness of fifteen, concocts a pot of onion soup for Mr. C, adds a pinch of pepper while Em stirs. V and Em are young chefs skipping school. (Em’s waitress mother gone all day at work.)
When the time comes to deliver, V insists she’ll take the soup to Mr. C alone. Two girls will be too much for a man sick with pneumonia. Em fights, but V holds firm. She packs the steaming pot into a box, steals a bowl and spoon from Em, leaves Em at the sink with a stack of dirty dishes to be washed.
At the paper stand on Lyndale, V buys a Tribune for Mr. C.
In her father’s final days, he liked V to sit beside his bed to read the Book of Psalms.
2.
V with the kindness of fifteen, standing in the hallway of the Belvedere Hotel. Her red hair in snowy ringlets, a goofy young girl grin.
Soup, she says, I heard that you were sick.
Mr. C in those strange cotton-pant pajamas, a matching shirt. Nearly naked without his strict black suit and tie.
Does your teacher know you’re here? He coughs.
Mr. C, exactly like her mother, always telling V to stay in school.
I brought you the Tribune, she says nodding toward the paper, looking past his striped pajamas to his private hotel life lit by one dim bulb. I could read you the paper while you rest. Serve you soup in bed.
You should go, he says, glancing down the vacant hallway, first right, then left, before he lets V step inside.
3.
Exactly as she’d dreamed when she left Em angry in that kitchen. Exactly as she’d dreamed walking three long miles to the Belvedere Hotel.
4.
[The kindness of fifteen. The hangman thirty-five.]
5.
6.
[I know what you think.]
7.
Afterward V closes like a zipper, her dream complete; Mr. C a snake she captured in the woods. The onion soup cold now on the table. V’s wrinkled blouse lost in his white sheets. The crumpled Tribune thrown open on the floor.
V weaves her slender fingers between his, rests her cheek against his fevered chest, draws a threaded needle between her heart and his.
You’re mine, she sighs, flexing up on one bare elbow to study his dark face.
To stare long into love.
Fifteen.
Sweetheart, Mr. C says with a wheeze. You’re young enough to be my kid.
I know, V says, wishing that she was.
[TRUE OR FALSE]
1. T F The author is deliberately deceptive.
2. T F The author does not know the truth and so she lies.
3. T F The author trusts fiction over fact.
4. T F The author wants the truth, but knows she’ll never have it.
5. T F There is a truth the author knows, but she can’t tell.
6. T F The author was taught early not to tell.
Generosity Revised
[Or this version based on facts—?
After fact, everything is fiction.]
Spring mist, a January trick, and V befuddled by a Life Science test on cells, decides to skip another day of school, walk the city alleys toward LaSalle. A secret maze of strangers’ garbage that leads to Mr. C.
Mr. C asleep at the Belvedere Hotel.
[For this version, let’s agree this visit’s not V’s first. She knows the corner building on LaSalle, the heavy door, the beveled window, the mildew smell of the front lobby, the flirty bow-tied boy at the front desk. V will never date a bow-tied boy again.]
Inside, she takes the shadowed hallway to the right. Morning Tribunes dropped outside closed doors. Smell of shaving soap and showers, and the murmur of low radios floating from the rooms. A place she’d like to live if he’d just ask.
At 106, V’s knock is soft and loose and full of hope. Last time she skipped school, he looped his arm around her waist, swept her in before another hotel tenant called the cops.
Mr. C is thirty-five and Jewish in a town against the Jews. (GENTILES PREFERRED; V has read the ads.) V’s fifteen, a girl in junior high. The cops get wind of this, he’ll land in jail. Men he knows have served time for carnal knowledge.
Carnal knowledge: two words that make V dangerous and dark. Caramel knowledge. A sweet subject to be studied, and he does.
No school? He blinks, surprised.
Life Science, she says, shrugging. I don’t understand a cell.
No? He smiles. I can help with that.
[And why dream them into being?
This man?
That girl?
My mother’s lost beginning?
Hotel or not? Mr. C or someone else?
That cell:
To understand that cell.]
“The fateful meeting of the sperm and the ovum takes place usually in the upper end of one of the fallopian tubes. It is a wonderful occasion.”
—William S. Sadler and Lena K. Sadler, The Mother and Her Child, 1916
Pinned
The first gift that he gives her is a dress clip. Costume jewelry fancy. Teardrop amethyst. Silver filigree. The two of them snowed-in inside the Cascade Club alone. The winter city stalled and buried under white.
For me? V says, surprised. After shows, men shower V with gifts—red carnations, dolls, and candy—but V will never be their girl. I don’t need a gift.
I know, he winks. His beautiful black eyes exactly like the raven in that poem V’s eighth-grade teacher made her memorize last year.
Evermore, she says, but he just laughs. Like Edgar Allan Poe.
I know that, too, he says. I went to school once. And it was nevermore in my book.
But evermore for us, V says.
Sure, he says. Why not? He clips the pin on her lapel like a medal V has earned.
For what? V asks. It’s not my birthday ‘til November. She’s told him that before, but maybe he forgot.
Sweet sixteen. You’ll have a hundred high school boys with trinkets for you then.
V knows that isn’t true, but it’s a lie she likes to hear and so she leaves it.
When you wear it think of me. His hand over her breast, his thumb across her nipple, his lips moving on V’s neck the way she loves.
Who else, but you? V answers, her hungry tongue darting ou
t toward his, her fingers on his face, the jeweled clip a gift she’ll love for evermore.
Outside the empty bar the winter night is silent. Cars abandoned under drifts. A quilt of blizzard snow over the street, the avenue deserted. Em at home in bed where she belongs. (V doesn’t want Em stopping after hours anymore. Em can see her in the morning; morning is enough.)
You think we’ll have to sleep here? V asks, nudging his suspender off his shoulder.
Sleep? He smiles. I don’t think that’s in the cards.
The Evidence of Love
Young V collects the evidence of love: His hotel window slammed against the winter draft, the way he curves his hands around her hips. How he asks her if it hurts, and hopes for no. The tender way he rests her back first on his bed, his left hand behind her head and whispers, Baby. How he bit the middle button from her blouse, a good luck charm V later found in his front pocket. How his dark eyes follow V as she works the Cascade Club. V the tiny vixen that belongs to Mr. C. Belongs. And doesn’t that mean love?
[Or do I collect the evidence of love?
Mr. C among V’s first explorers.
Me, seventy-five years later
looking for the subtext as I’ve trained myself to do.
The writer whose job it is to excavate.
The writer always looking
for that man inside her mirror.
That man of minor honor.
I invent his minor honor.
I invent it all.]
You Stay Safe?
In the early winter darkness, V shivers between houses, waits until her mother’s husband limps down Emerson toward Topps. That checkered cap, that leg. Always on his way to get a drink. Inside the basement hallway, his stench of menthol salve.
Evidence of V Page 2
