They are mounting the steps to the building. The doorman will let them in.
Daisy cannot have Penelope Wexner see her in a flag. She cannot tell her she is going in a flag to a hall by the river to climb up on a platform and sing patriotic songs for the Bonhomie Club. The simplest explanation, put to words, flushes her face red, puts splotches across her bare shoulder.
She walks very quietly and carefully to a closet, opens it by inches—the heels are knocking down the hall now—and places herself inside the closet behind Lelia’s perfumed and smoky clothes. Clothes that smell like jazz.
Penelope Wexner knocks on the door and calls out her name in a cheerful voice. She raps again. Daisy can hear Marconi snuffling, scratching at something. And then she can hear her friend chatting to the dog as if he were a snide friend. “Where could Daisy Lou—excuse me, Amelia—be?” she asks the dog in a rather loud, rather mocking kind of voice.
“Why would her window be flung open so wide if she weren’t at home?” The dog snuffles louder.
“I know! She has jumped and they have hauled off the remains. Poor sweet dear!” This, followed by a warm chuckle. And then the heels clacking back down the hall, trailed by the dog’s whispery claws.
Something in that small episode washes Daisy with bleakness. She closes her eyes and leans against the back of the closet, fighting a quick urge to weep. What is it? That her friend Penelope, who is supposed to be so tuned to emanations, cannot even divine that her friend of these months, her close spiritual friend, is within a few yards of her? That she laughs with a fat corgi about Daisy Lou jumping out of a window? That she could even conceive of such a joke?
All of that, yes. And something more. It is as if, hearing her friend’s voice through the door, through the clothes, she hears it filtered to some kind of essence. And the essence seems, for the first time, frivolous, silly, even a bit pathetic. She feels the way she does at a moving picture show when the image, jumping around and fuzzy, is adjusted by someone up there in the room that emits the ray of light—and the picture becomes hard and clear. There is something in what she just heard that makes Daisy think about that.
How very long this day would be! Daisy could have had no idea.
She finally stepped out of the closet and made the last adjustments to her garb and sang the songs of her program quietly to herself, listening to her phrasing, making sure she made clean attacks, especially in the case of the high notes in the anthem. She consulted her clock and went downstairs, covering herself with her coat as best she could, to wait for the car. She put the torch in a large shopping sack with her music and the spiked liberty crown, hoping the sleepy old doorman wouldn’t pick this occasion to ask questions. Already, she wanted it over with.
The automobile was fifteen minutes late and it was driven by a chauffeur who wore no uniform, nothing more than a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He spoke with a cigarette in his mouth, amiably but in the accents of a street hawker, Daisy thought. He was very young and provisional-looking.
The car was mud-spattered and was not a terribly large one, as she had expected. It didn’t even have a hard roof, just a black cloth one that didn’t fit any too tight. She sat on the front seat next to the driver, the cramped quarters requiring some adjustments with the crown and torch. She made sure she had her sheet music. She always brought it for the pianist so she could be sure that her numbers would be played in the key that best suited her voice.
The driver was overly solicitous at first. He put her coat up higher on her shoulders before she stepped in, and she could feel the warmth of the end of his cigarette, too near her neck, and his dry fingers brushing her bare shoulder.
He was a fast and competitive driver, tooting the horn often and squeezing exuberantly into minuscule spaces in the line of moving traffic. Daisy tried to ask him some questions—how long had he been associated with the Bonhomie Club; was this an annual patriotic event? He knew nothing. He grew distracted. He began to seem like what he was: someone hired off the street for the day.
They arrived and Daisy’s hopes climbed, because a rather nice-looking man in a suit presented her, on the spot, with an armful of red and white roses. They were a little the worse for wear, but roses nevertheless. And they had her photo taken then for a newspaper, the man presenting the roses to her, she giving them back, he giving them to her again, and the flashes flashing all the while, until she saw nothing anywhere but small cold flares.
Shall we talk about the rest of the evening? We already know, don’t we? Maybe it’s enough to see Daisy up there in her flags, trying to make her voice heard over the growing din. The cheers, even some coins thrown at her feet. Or the half hour she stands outside in the gritty breeze, waiting for the boy to come around in the car, her coat slipping off her shoulders because she can’t hold everything—the roses, the music, the crown, the coat. Maybe we see her hail a taxicab and the way the people inside it crane their heads and point and laugh as they pass. Or Daisy mistaking another car for the one that is supposed to come for her and running toward it, the flags flapping.
Would anyone have dared to tell her then that the club launders bootleg money, and processes bets, and that this annual event, trotted out for the papers, is a sham and most everyone knows it? That her money may or may not be in the mail?
The driver finally appears, surly now to the point of muteness. A whole life seems to have passed for him since he dropped her off. Hopes raised and dashed. Prospects appearing and winking out. Who can know?
Daisy has perhaps hoped that he would cheer her, deflect the grief that she knows is about to settle in. But he hasn’t a shred of heartiness. He is no ally.
They ride through the streets and he curses obstructions as if there were not a lady within miles. Daisy occupies herself by imagining what could have happened to him since they parted, but comes up with blanks. She begins to hope it was very bad, whatever it was.
In her flat, she tears off the flags, screaming a little at the pins, throwing the material in a ball in the closet, the old roses in the trash.
Lelia is gone, of course. She has left a note that if so-and-so comes by, tell him to jump in a lake! These shards of another life show up all the time now. She has anchored the note with one of her cigarette holders, the peacock-green one, and left a faint whiff of something that Daisy imagines is gin.
Now she lets the entire day wash over her and around her—it sounds like mocking applause and a friend’s suddenly silly voice and motorcars—and she says to herself, in a new voice, When, my dear girl? When are you going to step into the cold light of day?
Enclosed in the letter is a blurry newspaper photograph of Daisy Lou receiving roses from a portly grinning man. She looks quite jazzy and pretty, they think in Montana. The children keep the photo in an old book and show it to their friends. This is the one who made the phonograph record, they say, and then they will sometimes play the mended record again and examine the photo of Daisy being handed roses like a queen and her face a pretty heart-shaped one and her hair so stylish. What is she wearing? one of the children wonders. It appears, Jerry says wearily, to be the American flag.
April 20, 1923
Dear Jerry, Vivian and children—
Well the daffodils have made their annual appearance on the strip of earth that borders my building, a harbinger I am sure of bright days to come! How exciting it is to read in the New York papers about Shelby, Montana, and the Big Fight. I tell everyone my own brother was instrumental in arranging this extravaganza, and though I don’t know that I approve of boxing, I know it is considered a manly and character-forming pursuit among many decent people, and so I shall withhold my judgment on that score. It thrills me, I must say, to be related to people who live in a small village that is on the front page of the New York Times! Even Lelia was impressed. Do you think the money can indeed be raised? There is no small amount of skepticism on the part of many newspaper reporters here, but then they are a hard lot, I believe. I have met some
of them personally in my work and see nothing to dissuade me from that judgment.
For my part, I believe you can accomplish whatever you firmly set out to do and so I do believe that Mr. Jack Dempsey will indeed defend his world championship in Shelby, Montana, on Independence Day. And why should I not?
I have been busy as busy can be with my musical career. I am hoping Aeolian will see fit to make a phonograph record of my voice alone, without the presence of whistlers, and I am told it is a distinct possibility. However, they have seen fit recently to dismiss a Mr. Higgenbotham, an extremely artistic person and my staunch ally, and so I do not know what that portends. It is a crushing loss to me, as he had rare musical sensibilities and a Perfect Ear, all combined with Business Sense—a rare combination in this world!!
It is not easy sometimes in the city with so many people scrambling for opportunities. The photograph enclosed was an event in which I was chosen over many many others to perform, at least three singers I know have asked me how I was able to get the job altho, of course, it is only to make ends meet and does not fairly represent my aspirations. It was not an altogether satisfying event but live and learn.
I believe you mentioned that you have a radio station in Montana. Do you indeed? I ask this because I know that radio stations are starving for live entertainment, professional singers in particular. They have all those hours that they must fill with sound and so this has opened up many new career opportunities for musicians and—think of it!—a person can sing over the radio waves and reach audiences that number in the thousands and are sitting by their receiving sets hundreds and hundreds of miles away!
I ask about Montana because it occurs to me that there cannot be very many high-caliber musicians in such a place and that I could perhaps offer my services on a short-term basis and have a visit with you and Vivian and the kiddies too. What do you think, Jerry? Carlton writes that he will not miss the Big Fight and so perhaps we would have the first reunion of the three of us since Mother died. Wouldn’t that be glorious?! I have in mind a radio program that would be beautiful and appropriate, I feel.
Of course, I should only be able to stay several weeks, as I will very likely go to Europe in the early fall to study with Professor Lino in Milan, who is an intimate associate of my dear friend Penelope Wexner. Mrs. Wexner says it is essential that I achieve finish to my voice and that Professor Lino is the undisputed master in that aspect of performance. She insists on paying for the study and the trip—her husband is a very wealthy financier—but I have told her I cannot accept a gift and shall only consider a loan, to be repaid at the earliest possible opportunity.
Isn’t it terrible about Lord Carnarvon? That a mere bite from a mosquito should cause his death and just when he was on the verge of the culmination of his life’s work. It is too cruel!!! To think that, after thirty-three years searching for the tomb of King Tutankhamen, other eyes shall be the first to gaze upon the king’s remains in the innermost recesses of the tomb. One cannot help thinking that the tomb perhaps has a curse upon it. Mrs. Wexner says it assuredly does and that the first sign of it occurred last December when the pet canary of one of the excavators was killed by a serpent. Lo and behold, the very same kind of serpent was wrought in gold in the crowns of the statues inside the grave! Of course, I would be inclined to dismiss this as coincidence had I not heard a speech by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle only recently here in Manhattan. He said there are indeed spirits of the killing type and that he knew of a British journalist who contracted typhoid because he did research on a curse attached to a mummy in the British Museum. Sir Arthur said an evil elemental might have been brought into being by Tutankhamen’s spirit and caused Carnarvon’s death. He said an elemental is a built-up artificial thing, an imbued force which may be brought into being by a spirit mind or by nature. He said it exists of itself for a specific purpose and is not procreated. This seems to be a possible explanation for the untimely death, I believe. Lord Carnarvon had simply gone further than the spirit of the dead king could allow. Yet, how could he have known that he was “trespassing,” I should like to know? It seems such an unforeseen disaster, and so chilling too!
Well this has turned into a small book. Write me with all the inside news about the Big Fight and I shall send you clippings from the papers here. Also, please do not forget to check about the radio station.
Your loving sister,
Amelia (my new name.)
17
IT WAS quiet that morning, suddenly quiet after ten days of steady rain. Shelby came out of the night peach-colored and steaming, the only sound the drip, drip off the eaves. A pretty sun climbed a June sky.
They had promised each other, he and T.T.—the first rainless day, and they would put the kid in charge of the refreshment parlor and take the local to Great Falls.
They would go to Great Falls, do some real business if they could, and see Dempsey, the brute, in the flesh.
It was the kind of morning that made you think the whole thing might work out, after all. Maybe it was possible. Maybe there would be no more faltering, no more dramatic showdowns over the money, and the thing would come off and the new arena—planked high over six acres—would actually fill up with paying customers.
They wanted to see Dempsey work out because they wanted to confirm an idea they had of him.
This was a fighter who had not been fighting. Fifteen minutes of actual ring time in the last five years—add it up!—and the rest of the time hanging around Hollywood with movie stars and swells. Letting them stuff him with frog legs and gin fizzes. Babes and greasepaint and trips to Europe, but not a fight since Carpentier. Doc Kearns, Mr. Slick, couldn’t manage to find his champion a white man to fight. And said champion therefore sits around and goes soft and contented, and that is the end of the hound in the belly.
They wanted to see this for themselves.
T.T. sits on the depot bench smoking a huge cigar, hat pulled low. His loopy mustache has turned solid gray though he is scarcely into his thirties.
He is reading the oil news in the Tribune. Promising. Maybe. Soon. That is the language now. Has been for a while. And now everyone finally knows it for the code it is. Nothing is happening.
But T.T. still thinks the fight will change that; will bring the rich boys in with their motorcars to look the field over, chat it up, get some idea for themselves of the possibilities. This day has made him as optimistic as he ever gets, though you would only know it by small touches like the cigar. Or the way he gets up now and stretches, facing the rising sun and the flashing tracks.
They sit together, waiting for the train. A few shouts reach them. Those revelers who never sleep. The all-night denizens of the King Tut, the Green Lite, the Cabin. The ones who outlasted the imported dance bands. It was as if a huge radio had transplanted the sounds of the rest of the country right to Shelby. You imagined the musicians, these early mornings, propped sleeping in their tuxedos, to be wound up at nightfall: the night pulling them to their feet, the hands pulling the horns to their mouths, the horns pulling the city sounds out of the air.
People will be up soon and moving through the rosy mist. Rumpled. Hungover. The boys from the big papers back East. The local kids running errands for the strangers. The self-appointed cops with their big fake badges, strutting the boardwalks. Cowboys on horses. Indians in headdresses. A lady phrenologist in a gypsy costume and sensible mud-ready shoes.
By now, the fans should have been stepping off these trains for a week of revelry and spending and playing at being in the Wild West. But it is still mostly drifters, grifters, minor entertainers who are disembarking at Shelby.
The only people arriving are the ones who hope to make money off the thousands still to come.
Shelby, so soaked for so many days, exhales damply and gathers itself and gets busy again. The muffled hammering, the huffing saws, come into the open air. Tar paper is tacked to plywood. Signs are painted, hung to dry.
Ten days to go, and the last concession stand
s are going up. Everyone is selling something: Gibbons ribbons, miniature oil rigs, cowboy hats, chocolates.
Jerry and T.T. have converted Jerry’s basement office into a refreshment parlor. They got the ice cream in and a gross of blue sunglasses too, and then the rain began. So, of course, there was no business. No one wanted to venture down eleven slick steps to a basement room called the Cavern to buy ice cream or sunglasses.
Maybe today, though. Maybe it will get hot and the Monroe kid will sell some ice cream to somebody. More likely, he’ll give it out to his pals.
But today you can say, There’s still time. And this is only a half-brained little booster venture, anyway. A very temporary sideline.
Over east, the peaked green roof of the house where Tommy Gibbons and his wife and three young boys are living while he trains. And beyond the roof the monster arena, exhaling in the new sun. Waiting for its forty thousand fans. Just waiting now.
There is a child’s wagon on the step of Tommy’s house, filled with rainwater. A bird feeder hanging from an eave, covered with sparrows. Soon Tommy will come blinking out of the front door, a cup of coffee in his hand, tousling the head of one of his boys. While his wife fixes him a fighter’s breakfast, he will sit on the step and breathe the rainless air, a pleasant-faced burly young man with rosy cheeks, a pug boxer’s nose, a mangled ear, knobby finger joints.
He will sit on the step, squinty-eyed, moving his gaze over the ramshackle little town, the glittering tracks that are supposed to bring all the people to the fight of his life.
One Sweet Quarrel (Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust Rediscoveries) Page 20
