“After he got settled, he opened one up and reached his hand inside. Then he brought it out and threw a fistful of the white stuff in the air. It rained down in clumps onto the water and the grass surrounding him. And suddenly, it was like a signal had been sent to every bird in the park at once. They all descended on the same spot like vultures.
“It was bread, of course, the white stuff. Wonder Bread. And once he started flinging it, he didn’t stop. Sometimes he shredded the slices with his hands. Sometimes he chucked them whole. Soon, we couldn’t even see him anymore for all the dive-bombing birds. Ducks. Pigeons. Seagulls. Crows. It was a battle royal, which was ridiculous because it was clear he was never going to run out of bread. He had enough to feed every bird in the park until they were stuffed. He was the god of bread.
“When I looked over at Jonah, I noticed that he was crying. And not just a little. There were tears pouring down his face. He stood up and told me he couldn’t be there anymore. And I put my arm around him and walked with him until we had left everything behind. The park. And the lagoon. And the old man with the bread. I tried talking about it at first. ‘Where did he even get all the bread?’ I asked. But he was silent. So I asked him what was wrong, and he couldn’t explain it to me. It was only after we’d been walking a while that he looked me in the eye. And he said, ‘I just know how that guy feels.’
“But he wouldn’t say anything else about it. When we got back to campus he seemed okay again. He calmed down and he apologized for his breakdown in the park. He even laughed about it a little. I told him I thought maybe he should see somebody at Health Services, a counselor, and he assured me he would. He told me I was a good friend and that he was lucky he knew me. And then we played video games for a couple of hours and went to bed like it was any other day.
“I felt better the next day, like maybe I had gotten through to him. But, after that, he wasn’t around the room very much. Then he disappeared for a couple of days, and I never saw him again.”
I wiped my runny nose on my sleeve. I had started crying at some point, but I wasn’t sure when.
“What happened after that?” I asked.
“My parents flew out and came to campus the next day. They moved me to a hotel by the airport. I made them stay around for a week, but nothing really happened. A vigil outside. A moment of silence in the cafeteria. A discussion about suicide prevention education. Then we went home.”
“What about the funeral?”
“There was no funeral.”
His voice was softer now.
“It was just a private thing for the family. I called his mom the day after it happened, and asked if I could come. She said no.”
“Did she say why?”
“She said it would be too much. Too painful to see her son’s friends, other people his age. She apologized, but she couldn’t do it. There was a charity set up somewhere. I could donate to that if I wanted.”
“So you never saw his body?”
“No.”
“What about when it actually happened?”
“By the time I heard, they had already taken him away.”
I nodded, even though I knew he couldn’t hear that through the phone.
“Before my parents got there I was in our dorm room by myself. And I found this folder he had kept. Inside it was a list of things he was going to do when he got better. It was from a self-help book or something. Some of them were simple like ‘get a part-time job.’ Others were a little more Jonah: ‘learn to be a projectionist at a revival movie house.’ But the one that stuck out to me was ‘study away in Sicily.’ It’s not that big a deal, I guess. A lot of college kids study abroad. But there was something about picturing him in another country that just brought it all home. If things had gone a different way, I could imagine him there so easily.”
“Why didn’t anyone else know about his depression? Why wasn’t someone else there to stop him?”
Daniel sighed.
“He didn’t have any other good friends, Tess,” he said. “Everybody liked him, but not many people knew him. I think we were it. You and me. We were all he had.”
“That can’t be true,” I said.
“Can you see why I didn’t want it to end?” said Daniel.
I sat up suddenly. The phone was wet and hot against my ear.
“I can’t do this,” I said.
Daniel’s voice sounded desperate when he spoke.
“Tess,” he said.
“No,” I said. “I mean. This. The distance. The phone. I can’t do this kind of thing anymore. I don’t think it’s good for me.”
He was silent for a moment.
“So, what are you saying exactly?” he said.
I debated for a second about whether to speak the sentence in my mind. It was just hovering there, waiting to change everything. But I couldn’t hold it back. It seemed like the only thing left to do.
“What I’m saying is,” I said, “no more phones.”
22
I went back to Sunrise the next day.
I worried about what to tell my dad, but when I woke up he wasn’t there. I’d heard him talking on the phone the night before, giggling like an idiot, but that was the only thing out of the ordinary. So I drove back to the commons and showed up during visiting hours. When I got back to the Memory Care Unit, I immediately saw two men get into a screaming match over a game of Connect Four. They had to be sent to their rooms like children. I started to wonder if I had it in me to hang around this place.
This all changed when I found Mamie.
“Tilly!” she called to me, when I showed up.
“Hi, Mamie,” I said.
I didn’t correct her about my name. Though, what my dad said about her lucidity flashed through my brain.
“Come with me,” she said. “It’s my day in the salon. I’ve got to get my hair set!”
She took me down to the on-site hair salon, and soon her head was full of pink curlers. I wasn’t sure how to start talking to her about her funeral. But she jumped right in. Before we could move forward with the planning, she said, I needed to know something about burlesque. So Mamie Lee started to tell her story.
“I left Minnesota for Hollywood first,” she said. “But after doing some work in the chorus lines, a promoter saw me and thought I’d be good for his club in New York. He told me I could have top billing if I didn’t mind showing a little more.”
She blushed, but just for a second.
“You have to understand, though, Tilly. It’s not like it is now with girls showing everything down there and working on greasy poles. It was glamorous! A show. And it was about the tease. At Minsky’s, I once took two whole minutes to remove a glove! The guys went crazy for it. They jumped out of their seats! What do you think happened when they saw my bazooms?!”
I started recording Mamie on my cell phone camera, so I could remember some of this. I focused on the little flip of her white hair with her manicured hand. If she noticed my recording, she didn’t seem to care.
“There were a lot of men,” she went on. “But I never went in for the comedians. I was into the sax players myself. They wailed on the stuff that got us going crazy. And there was this one player who was so nervous around me. I used to look him in the eye while he was playing and wait for him to miss a note. Once I left my pasties on his dressing room door. He was just a boy, really. I missed him when I quit performing, but I never did talk to him again.”
“Why’d you give it up?” I asked.
For a moment, Mamie looked like a statue of herself, sitting there, completely still. Then she spoke out of the corner of her mouth.
“It wasn’t really my choice, sweetie,” she said. “I couldn’t make the jump to the movies. Couldn’t act for a damn.”
“But you could have still danced, right?”
The skinny blond doing
her hair spritzed Mamie’s curls with a spray bottle. The sunlight caught the mist and made it glow around her head.
Mamie didn’t answer my question.
“Do you still have your old costumes and everything?” I asked.
Mamie waved her hand like she was shooing away a fly.
“I sent what was left to Exotic Land, years ago.”
I watched her eyes droop closed in the long salon mirror.
“Exotic Land?”
“Burlesque Hall of Fame out there in Vegas. They got Sheri Champagne’s ashes, I hear. And Jane Mansfield’s sofa, shaped like a heart.”
“Have you kept in touch with any of the girls?”
She shook her head. I saw Mamie’s eyes go moist. The hairdresser glared at me.
“We try to keep them from getting upset,” she said, as if Mamie wasn’t able to hear her.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to upset anybody.”
I shut off my phone. But Mamie spoke up.
“Leave it on,” she said.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“Your little camera gadget. Go ahead and leave it on if you want. It’s okay.”
She turned toward the hairdresser.
“You can set me in a minute, Jordan.”
The hairdresser puffed out a breath and walked away. I turned my phone back on and leveled it on Mamie Lee’s face.
“I didn’t want to give it up,” she said. “There’s the truth.”
She wiped a tear from the top of her cheekbone.
“I married a man from back here, a friend of the family, and he told me I was through with it. He was real conservative. Nice enough, but manipulative. I learned too late that’s the worst quality in a man. He wanted to reform me, I guess. That was his kick.”
“Why didn’t you say no?”
“I didn’t know what options I had. It was hard to get a straight job afterward, so I came back to become a housewife. I guess I was comfortable enough, but I always regretted giving everything up so quick and not keeping up with the girls. My husband died a few years ago and left me some money. I’d like to put some of it toward something a little wicked. You understand me, Tilly?”
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
“I spent too much of my life being good. It’s killing me.”
I turned off my camera. I squeezed her hand and told her I would be back soon with a plan. Then I walked out of the commons, my thoughts already churning. Who would even attend Mamie’s ceremony if we could pull it off? She told me she wasn’t close with her children and she had very little other family.
I was driving back, playing my recording in the car, when the answer came to me. And when it did, I found myself pulling over to look up a number and make a call to a place I hoped actually existed.
23
Daniel didn’t call that night. Or the night after.
Of course, I had told him not to, but I was still surprised when he didn’t. I knew the last thing I told him had been an ultimatum of sorts. And I knew it had been abrupt. But I didn’t care. I was growing closer to yet another person I didn’t really know. And I was trying to put an end to that stage of my life.
I’d already gone that route once and now that person, who had never really let me in, was gone for good. That’s why my computer was at the bottom of a lake, confusing the hell out of local bottom-dwellers. That’s why I was home planning funerals instead of getting a high school diploma.
And I needed to get better, not worse. So, I decided I wouldn’t call again, even if I was tempted. I would let him go if that’s what it took. And in the meantime, I would try everything I could not to think about him.
Instead, I would concentrate on Mamie’s funeral. Now that I’d heard her story, I knew I had to help her whether my father was on board or not. But in order to do it, I had two big problems to solve. The first was finding a venue. And the second was getting in touch with Mamie’s old friends.
I started with the first.
Unfortunately, my early attempts were a bust. Sunrise Commons refused to do anything related to funerals or stripping, let alone a combo of the two. Funeral homes preferred dead bodies to half-naked living ones. And community centers seemed to have a limited definition of a “community event.” So late that morning, I went to the only other place I could think of: a strip club.
■ ■ ■
By noon I was standing outside of a place called Harry Palmer’s. It was a dive, which is why I chose it. I had to have a better chance at a place so run down. Also, according to horny high school boys I’d once known, HP’s was notorious about not carding. So, it came as a bit of a surprise when a man in a plaid Western shirt and a leather vest stopped me at the door.
“Not so fast, honey,” he said. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“To see some sad naked women?” I said.
He blinked. It appeared that he had never heard this answer before. He scrunched his thick gray eyebrows.
“You have to be twenty-one,” he muttered. “And all ladies need a male escort.”
“I was just kidding,” I said. “I don’t want to see any boobs. I’m Harry’s niece. I need to talk to him.”
The man looked deeply perplexed now. He turned around, presumably to look for Harry. The leather tassels on his vest swished.
“Wait here,” he said.
He lumbered across the room, and entered a door to the side of the stage. Immediately, I walked into the place and took a seat at a bar, which was strung with blinking red Christmas lights. I glanced toward the stage.
Thankfully, there weren’t any girls my age working the day shift. The women dancing seemed chosen to appeal to an older clientele. Both dancers—one a dyed redhead with gravity-defying fake boobs and a thin Korean woman dressed like a stereotypical schoolgirl—looked old enough to be my mom. Or my mom’s mom.
“You are not related to me!” came a voice from across the club. “And I don’t need any new girls. Especially not underage girls. That is not something I’m interested in.”
A man I could only assume was Harry Palmer came up behind the bar, holding a Bloody Mary with half a garden stuffed inside. He had thick black hair sticking out of a faded military cap. When he smiled, he revealed a perfectly straight row of wine-stained teeth beneath his mustache.
“I suppose you could be a hostess,” he said. “But that’s the best I can do. The tips are still pretty good. But you have to deal with the regulars.”
He took a long pull on his Bloody Mary.
“I’m not here for a job,” I said.
He swallowed.
“Oh,” he said. “Then it seems my drinking has been interrupted for no reason. Have a nice day. Francis will show you out.”
He got up to walk away. The man in the Western shirt—Francis?—took a step forward. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I tried to think about what a real businesswoman would do. Someone like Grace.
“Hey!” I said. “I don’t intend to waste your time, Harry.”
He turned around.
“No? Then why are you still sitting here?”
“Because I have a proposal that I think you might be interested in.”
Harry crossed his arms and put on his professional look of interest. It was very similar to his regular look.
“Lay it on me,” he said. “You have thirty seconds.”
I waved my arm, gesturing toward the clients of the club.
“How many people do you typically get in here on a Monday morning?” I asked.
Harry pursed his lips and blew a long, wet raspberry.
“I figured,” I said. “What if I told you I could fill this place with respectable people from the golden age of burlesque. The only thing you would have to do is give me the space. You keep everything from the bar. I cater, decorate, and organize.
”
He looked at me again, maybe for the first time.
“How old are you?” he said.
“Twenty,” I said.
It was hard for me not to crack a smile, but I kept it together.
“What’s the catch?” Harry asked.
“The catch is that it’s a living funeral,” I said.
I couldn’t tell if the phrase meant anything to him. Or if he’d even heard me. Harry looked around his club, his gaze lingering on his clients. There was a man in cutoff jean shorts and cowboy boots, nursing a double-shot of whiskey. Another guy by the stage had a dollar in his teeth and a trucker hat that read “I Love Fat Chicks.”
“Hell,” said Harry. “Every day here is a living funeral.”
24
Here lies the last text you’ll ever get from me.
This was the final dispatch from the land of Daniel Torres. It appeared on my phone at exactly 9:33 the next morning while I was eating breakfast by myself. My dad was off again, who knows where, so I had no one to tell me not to check my phone at the table. I was deciding whether to respond when UPS showed up on the porch with a heavily insured package. I brought it inside and looked at the label: Exotic Land, USA.
I’d spent the latter half of yesterday on the phone with the curator, telling her about Mamie. I even sent her the cell phone video of Mamie telling her story. She said she’d overnight me something, and I wasn’t sure I believed her. But when I opened the box, I found a perfectly preserved black satin strapless gown, encrusted with thousands of glittering rhinestones.
The stones were incandescent in the light of the morning. They were like a constellation plunging down the dark satin bodice to a ruched waistline. The dress came with matching mid-length silver gloves, a fringed pair of black panties, and tasseled rhinestone pasties. Also included in the package were the names and contact information of ten living dancers from the golden age of burlesque.
I got on the phone right away, and called them up one-by-one. I spoke with a former Broadway actress first, a woman with a breathy voice who got into the trade when she couldn’t get acting work. She was now a retired theater teacher in Arizona. I talked to a pinup girl who lived in a double-wide with all her memorabilia, the sole curator and visitor of her own mobile museum. “I remember Mamie,” she croaked. “Great rack on that little lady!”
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