Finding Dorothy

by Elizabeth Letts

  “Give us a sign.” Again, silence. Maud slowly raised her knee and bumped the underside of the table, taking care not to jostle the candle too much.

  The startled cries around the table satisfied Maud. It pleased her to know that the girls could get up to their own mischief without having to carouse outside like the boys.

  “Miss Josephine Baum, please state your question.”

  “What is the name of the man I will marry?” The girls all giggled, the table jostled, and the candlelight flickered around the room.

  Now Maud had to improvise. She had a strange feeling deep in the pit of her stomach: Did all the girls know she was just fooling? Or had she swept them up into something without really thinking about the consequences?

  She looked around at the faces of the gathered girls, wondering what should happen next, but soon her sense of fun overtook her. With her index finger, she began a series of knocks under the table. She tapped three times, then stopped.

  “Why, I believe that the spirits are spelling,” Jessie Mary cried out.

  “One-two-three. It must be C!” one of the other girls said in a hushed voice.

  Counting on her fingers, Josie exclaimed, “It’s C!”

  “Charlie Thorp!” the girls cried in unison. Of course everyone knew that he was Josie’s beau.

  “Ask him when we will marry!” Josie said excitedly.

  Maud quickly did the math in her head, figuring out when Charlie would graduate before tapping the numbers 1-8-8-3.

  Soon the room was filling with questions, and Maud stopped worrying so much about whether it was obvious that she was answering everything herself.

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS PAST ONE in the morning, and the girls were finally starting to tire. The candle was burning down to a stub, and the air of heady excitement was tapering down to yawns and fatigue. Maud herself was worn out. As the night had gone on, the girls had heard more shouting and revelry as packs of drunken boys had carried on below their windows. At one point they even heard the windows rattling—as if someone had thrown up pebbles—but when they looked below, they saw nothing and heard only the sounds of distant laughter. Maud was glad that the boys had seen the lights flickering and known that the girls also had secret cabals of which the men could have no part. At the same time, she wished desperately that she were outside, in the cold night and wide-open air, instead of trapped inside this stuffy room where all of the girls seemed to have anointed her as the purveyor of vital information about their future lives.

  “We thank you, kind spirits, for revealing the secrets of the other world,” Maud said, hoping to wrap it up for the night.

  “But, Maud!” Josie cried. “We haven’t asked a question for you!”

  Maud had been hoping that this omission would pass unnoticed. She dreaded the indignity of asking her question only to have the question remain unanswered, because she couldn’t answer it. She did not know whom she would marry.

  “Yes, Maud! We must ask for Maud,” cried a chorus of voices.

  “No,” Maud said. “I don’t want to know. I don’t want to ask the spirits about myself.”

  “Well, then I’ll ask,” said Josie. “Oh, spirit, please tell us the name of the man that Miss Maud Gage will marry.”

  Now Maud was biting her tongue. She wanted more than anything to put a halt to all this and confess that the only spirit in this room tonight had been her own—the one that no one ever tired of telling her was far too lively. The silence had grown so long that Maud thought she would die of embarrassment when into the silence a muffled rapping sound started at the window: 1…2…3…4…5, then a lengthy silence, then one more: 6.

  Maud leapt up from her seat at the table so quick that she almost knocked over the candle.

  “The wind is blowing,” she said. “It’s just a pine bough batting up against the window.” She pushed open the heavy sash and frigid air rushed inside, making her shiver violently. Outside the window, she could make out the outlines of a pine tree, which was now utterly still.

  “Close the window, Maud, we’re all freezing in here!” Jessie Mary said.

  The girls had all lost interest and were overtaken by yawning, and the stub of their candle finally sputtered out, leaving them in darkness. Tired but full of new gossip and speculation, everyone except Josie and Maud departed for their own rooms.

  The two girls settled under their covers, but Maud lay awake in her bed, thinking about her own deception. She was in so deep that she couldn’t possibly confess. And what of the six taps of the pine bough upon the window when the air was still outside? A sudden gust of wind, she told herself, had moved the branch—that was all. She tossed about until her bedclothes were rumpled.

  At last she could keep quiet no longer. “Do you believe in spirits?” she whispered, thinking that if Josie had already fallen asleep, her friend would not hear.

  But Josie was also wide-awake. “I do, I do, of course I do,” Josie replied. “You heard the sounds as well as I did.”

  “Perhaps…” Maud thought again of confessing her role as a “medium,” only she didn’t quite dare. “Perhaps one of the girls was knocking the table?”

  “But why would anyone want to do that?” Josie sounded mystified. “What good would it do to make up stories when we want real answers?”

  The question hung in the air between them. Maud wasn’t sure what to say. From where she sat, people often preferred made-up stories to real answers. Hadn’t she spent her whole life around her mother’s suffragist friends, women who always had their eyes set one hundred years in the future, imagining the welfare of their daughters’ daughters’ daughters while they sometimes seemed too busy to pay attention to the flesh-and-blood girls who stood before them? Was imagining that you could see the future really any different from knocking on tables in the middle of the night?

  Maud lay in silence for a while, thinking about the six faint scratches against the window. A, B, C, D, E, F—according to superstition, she should be marrying a person named F. Only what if it wasn’t F for someone’s name but, rather, a big fat F for failure?

  “Guess what?” Josie was still awake. “I suddenly realized that I know exactly who would be perfect for you. You want me to tell you?”

  Maud rolled over and propped her chin up on her hand, peering at her roommate’s silhouette in the other bed.

  “Not at all. It doesn’t interest me in the least.”

  “Oh come on, sure you do.” Josie yawned and rustled in her bed. “What girl doesn’t want to know the name of the man she’ll be married to by next year?”

  “Well, you can tell it’s all nonsense just from that,” Maud said. “One year from now, I’ll be right here where I am now, studying at Sage College.”

  “Oh, I can’t resist telling you. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it right away. I know someone who is just as peculiar as you!”

  “Oh, ‘peculiar’! That is some compliment!” Maud said. “You’ve been on the lookout for a boy who is just as peculiar and odd and strange as Maud Gage?”

  “No,” Josie said. “That’s not how I mean it. This is someone quite wonderful—he’s handsome and kind, and he’s funny, and ever so interesting.”

  “Funny and kind,” Maud said. “Now, that is peculiar!”

  “But there is something about him that’s—oh, you’ll just have to meet him. Come for a visit at Christmastime and I’ll see that he comes to call. He’s my cousin. His name is Frank. Frank Baum.”

  Frank. Maud could almost hear the faint scratching of the tree branch, although now all was silent. A, B, C, D, E, then F.

  CHAPTER

  6

  HOLLYWOOD

  1939

  “Mrs. Baum?”

  The phone rang at Ozcot at ten o’clock on a Thursday morning. The switchboard operator’s nasa
l voice said, “Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios is on the line. Can you please hold?”

  Maud gripped the receiver, frowning in concentration. This was the first time anyone from the studio had gotten in touch with her. Had Louis B. Mayer decided to enlist her help after all?

  “Mrs. Baum, this is Mary Smith—I’m the unit publicist for The Wizard of Oz? Can you come over to the lot this morning? We have something we want to show you.”

  “Come over to the lot?” Maud tried to suppress the note of enthusiasm that leapt into her voice. She was thrilled to be asked but didn’t want to fawn—she should not need to beg to be involved.

  “We’ll send a car,” the woman said.

  An hour later, Maud was being driven through the front gates of the studio. This time, the guard behind the glass didn’t stop them at all—just issued a jaunty wave. The car pulled up in front of the sound stage. Inside, the light was dim, and it appeared that they were doing something with costumes. As her eyes adjusted to the light, Maud saw a determined young woman with a mass of blond curls hurrying toward her.

  “Mrs. Baum?” she said. “I’m Mary Smith, the one who phoned you? It is such a pleasure to meet you. You must be wondering why we brought you here?”

  “Indeed,” Maud said, her tone cool as she studied the young publicist’s overly bright expression. She had not forgotten the repeated snubs that had preceded this morning’s abrupt invitation.

  “It’s just that we’ve had the strangest—well, let me just show you,” Mary said. “We’ve found something that we think may be of interest to you….It’s just the gosh-darnedest thing…”

  Mary Smith darted away, leaving Maud standing on the set alone—with only a bridge and a wooden wagon. On the side was painted PROFESSOR MARVEL in big gilt letters. Maud could not place this scene in Frank’s book. She had expected to feel elated to finally set foot on the set of The Wizard of Oz. Instead, she felt disoriented, and puzzled about why she was here.

  “Here it is,” the publicist clucked. “This is the one!”

  Curly-haired Mary had returned, now holding a faded old coat—hanger in one hand, the rest draped over her arm. Evidently, it was a costume of some kind.

  Maud groped around in her handbag until she found her glasses, perching them on the end of her nose, but even with sharper vision, she did not see what was special about this garment. It was just an old suit coat with prominent lapels.

  “Isn’t it amazing!” the publicist shrilled, clapping her hands together in delight.

  Her exclamation was loud enough that it caused a small crowd to gather around them, some people wearing costumes and makeup, others in paint-splattered coveralls, others carrying clipboards. Some of the cameramen had clambered down from their high stools. Toward the back of the group, Maud caught a glimpse of the young actress playing Dorothy.

  “The costumer sent an assistant to look for old jackets in a local secondhand store. She bought up a whole rack of them. We’ve been testing costumes for Mr. Morgan.”

  Maud recognized the actor cast to play the wizard, Frank Morgan. She had kept up with the casting decisions by reading Variety. He pushed toward the center of the circle, bringing with him the scent of whiskey.

  “There was a hole in the front pocket,” he said. “And when I pulled the lining out…” The actor appeared quite shaken, his face white around the edges of his makeup.

  The publicist was now groping along the outside of the jacket, a huge heavy garment made of faded black broadcloth so aged it had acquired a greenish tinge.

  “Here!” she said. “This is what we found. What Mr. Morgan found, to be precise.”

  “I pulled out the pocket,” Morgan went on, seeming to have regained his composure. He now spoke in his booming theater voice: “And at once, I beheld the name….A name I would never forget, mind you, as it graced the cover of the most delightful Christmas present I ever received when I was but a lad, a gift from my father, a brand-new copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. When I saw the tag, I realized, to my utter amazement, that this jacket had once belonged to the great author himself.”

  He pointed to a faded name tag stitched onto the breast pocket lining.

  “As you can see, it reads L. FRANK BAUM!” Morgan pronounced triumphantly.

  “L. Frank Baum?” Maud was bewildered. She leaned in closer, close enough to catch the jacket’s scent, hoping to pick up a trace of Frank there, but all she smelled was mothballs.

  “Says so right here,” Morgan repeated, holding the garment out for Maud’s inspection.

  Maud reached out, rubbing her finger over the tag, turning it so that one of the bright spotlights shone more directly upon it. She could make out an L and an F and a B, but not much else. And the jacket—now that she saw it up close, there was something familiar about it. It was a turn-of-the-century style, a long Prince Albert jacket—it was true, Frank had once worn that style. A wave of confusion suddenly washed over her. Closing her eyes, she could clearly imagine him standing vividly beside her. How could this old garment compete with the bright memories that still danced in her mind?

  “It’s startling, isn’t it?” the publicist said, looking at Maud with round blue eyes.

  Maud stared at the faded tag. Most of the printing had been rubbed off—seeing her husband’s name required a squint and a good bit of fill-in-the-blanks. More clear was the tag that read, BOSTWICK & SONS, the name of a large Chicago haberdasher.

  “I remember Bostwick & Sons…”

  “So did it belong to your husband?”

  Maud reached out, feeling the cloth in her hand. Many men had worn those Prince Albert jackets around the turn of the century. Bostwick & Sons had been a popular haberdasher—half the salesmen in Chicago had probably had a jacket like this one at that time.

  She looked up at the publicist, trying to read her expression. What did she want from Maud?

  “We were hoping you could authenticate it,” the publicist insisted.

  The rest of the faces gathered around her were looking at her expectantly. Maud tried to think.

  Then suddenly it was as if Frank himself were standing there before her in their Chicago kitchen, his face gray with fatigue but his countenance still lit up with a sunny smile. He was back from a two-week trip selling china, and on his last stop, in Galena, Illinois, he had set the heavy trunk down on a street corner as he awaited the arrival of his livery carriage, just for a minute, and a mule had kicked it over, breaking all of the fine china inside. The cost to replace the samples was twenty cents more than he had earned during the entire trip.

  She could see this scene, more than forty years past, as if it were just earlier that day, the way the light was filtering in from the window behind him so that a shadow fell across his face.

  “I’ve got a hole in my pocket,” he had said, flipping out the two waist pockets at the same time as if performing a magic trick. Several folded bits of paper flipped out, too, skittering across the floor like the secret notes kids passed in grammar school. Maud bent over to pick them up.

  “And what is this?” she had asked, uncrumpling one. She flattened it out against the table where her mending basket sat.

  “Nothing,” Frank had said. “I’m just scribbling a few lines. It gets so dull sitting on the train that I make up stories.”

  “Made-up stories and holes in your pockets! That’s all you’ve got to show for yourself, Frank Baum?” Maud’s mother had called from the other room.

  A moment later, Matilda had come into the kitchen with a swish of heavy skirts; she’d leaned over, plucked one of the crumpled pieces of paper from the floor, and read the words that Frank had scribbled there.

  “You are clever, Frank. You should write some of these down.”

  Standing in that kitchen in 1892, Maud had had more important things to worry about than made-up stories and writing things down—s
he’d needed to get supper on the table.

  “Mrs. Baum? Would you like to sit down?”

  Maud snapped back to the present, noticing that everyone was staring at her.

  By this time, Judy had jostled her way to the front of the assembled group. The last time Maud had seen her, she’d been wearing no makeup. Today, her skin was covered by a layer of foundation with darker lines of contour visible on each side of her nose. Her brown eyes, highlighted by heavy eyeliner and fringed with false eyelashes, glowed brightly. The layer of thick cosmetics made her look older, but her hopeful expression made her seem even younger.

  “The coat belonged to the man who wrote the book?” She stared wonderingly at the jacket. “How did it end up here? Did you bring it?”

  “Bring it?” Maud looked out at the small knot of people clustered around her. She peered over her glasses. “I most certainly did not. I’m seeing it for the first time right now.”

  “But what about the tag?” people were murmuring. “Does it really say his name?”

  Mary Smith was looking expectantly at Maud. “It does say his name, doesn’t it?”

  It was starting to dawn on Maud what was going on here. Did they think that because she was old she was dim-witted?

  “You know, I’ve been in Hollywood for thirty years now,” Maud said. “And in the theater even longer…” She paused for effect. “You call me to the studio to see an old coat. You want to make me believe that you just happened upon an old coat that once belonged to L. Frank Baum?”

  The young publicist nodded.

  “Well, I think I know a publicity stunt when I see it,” Maud said. “I’ll allow that it’s clever. The book and its author have millions of fans. If you connect the jacket to the author and the author to the moving picture, it should make for some nice press. Well done, I say.”

  “Oh, no, Mrs. Baum.” The blonde shook her curly head like a retriever just emerged from a swimming pool. “I assure you, this is no stunt. The costumer’s assistant went to a secondhand shop. She brought back a pile of old men’s jackets.” She gestured to a motley rack of coats of all shapes and hues. “This was just the only one that fit Morgan.”