Finding Dorothy

by Elizabeth Letts

  “Oh dear. I hope you don’t have a similar problem.”

  “Makeup mixed up the aluminum powder with grease so I don’t breathe it in. Maybe I’ll end up in the hospital, too. Who knows? Wouldn’t mind,” he said, taking a long, satisfied drag on his cigarette. “I get so hot in this costume. Fella wouldn’t mind ending up in the hospital, some days.”

  “Well, I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Haley. I’m Maud Baum. My late husband—”

  “Wrote the book?” he said. “Yeah, I know. I’ve seen you around.”

  “Is your costume really made out of tin?”

  “See for yourself. Bang on my chest if you want.”

  Maud tentatively stuck out a finger and tapped. Not metal.

  “Leather,” the tin man said. “It’s buckram covered with leather and spray-painted. Looks real though, don’t it?”

  The stage door pushed open, and a young man with a clipboard appeared. “Back to work, Haley.”

  “Aww, my heart is breaking. Except, of course, that I don’t have one,” he laughed. He flicked the black-smudged cigarette onto the asphalt and ground it out with his giant silver, rivet-covered foot, pulled open the door, and gallantly held it until Maud had passed.

  Maud found her way to the rear of the dimly lit sound stage and took a seat on the viewing platform. Transformed again since her last visit, the set was now crowded with lifelike trees studded with artificial bright red apples. A segment of painted yellow road ran along a post-and-rail fence. Behind it was a rough brown façade that Maud recognized as the woodcutter’s house. With dismay, she realized that this scene corresponded to chapter 6 in the book. Chapter 6! With each dancing step the characters took along the road to Oz, more of the spooling roll of film was in the can. For all of these visits to the set, what had Maud accomplished?

  The Tin Man took his place as the set decorators draped him with ivy and adjusted his stance just so. After some time, Judy emerged from the shadows. Two women in pink smocks trailed her, one brandishing a comb and the other holding a makeup sponge. At last, the director signaled and the camera clicked into action. Maud watched Judy get down on her hands and knees, find two bright red plaster apples at the Tin Man’s feet, and rap on one foot before she looked up and realized she was beholding a man made of tin.

  “You’ve got to be more surprised,” the director scolded. “It’s not every day that you run into a tin man. The characters are imaginary, but you’re a real girl. Act astonished, Judy!”

  This kind of direction went on through several takes. From what Maud could tell, this part of the script hewed pretty closely to the original scene in the book. She watched anxiously as Judy tried again and again to get it right. No one let up on the girl just because she was young. The director and producers bossed her about, the male actors constantly tried to upstage her, and her mother sometimes darted onto the set to tug at her daughter’s dress or make some whispered judgment. But Judy remained at all times professional, unflappable, calm.

  After a while, the men stopped to solve a camera problem and the action ground to a halt. The actors lounged about while a makeup artist fiddled with the Tin Man’s face. Blue-covered scripts were scattered here and there on the stage, some splayed open. Maud’s yearning to hold one in her hands, to leaf through it at her leisure, was so intense that she could hardly concentrate as the director adjusted tiny aspects of the lighting and the camera’s angle. Maud had been trying to catch Judy’s eye, but the girl was not looking her way.

  A young man hurried through the back door and straight up to the director.

  Fleming turned to the actors and said, “I’ve got to take a telephone call. Ten-minute break.”

  Judy seemed to have disappeared somewhere into the set. The rest of the actors were streaming toward the exits, no doubt for smoke breaks. The door swung open and shut several times, and then stayed shut, leaving Maud alone on the viewing platform. The sound stage, bustling just a moment earlier, was now empty and silent.

  Maud looked again at the empty stage—the painted Yellow Brick Road, the trees made of chicken wire and foam rubber, the façade of the woodcutter’s house. She reached into her purse to pluck out the paperback she was reading, but then, on second thought, put it back as she realized what was right in front of her. Scattered on makeshift tree stumps and abandoned on director’s chairs were several copies of the script. Maud drew a sharp breath inward and stood up slowly.

  Would she?

  She pictured her own mother, Matilda Gage, in 1876 when she and Auntie Susan and the rest of the officers of the National Woman Suffrage Association had stormed the dais at the nation’s centennial celebration to present a Declaration of the Rights of Woman directly into the hands of the vice president of the United States. Certainly, her mother had not raised her to shy from a challenge.

  Maud slipped her purse over the crook of her elbow.

  The heels of her pumps sounded like a cannon fusillade in the silent room as she hurried across the wooden floor, her eyes fixed on the director’s chair. Swooping in, she grabbed the closest copy of the script and tucked it under her arm. None too soon. A crack of light had appeared at the back door. Without thinking, she rushed away from the light—hoping there was a back door somewhere so that she could duck out unseen.

  The first possible route of escape was a door marked WARDROBE. She tried the doorknob, found it unlocked, and slowly pushed it open.

  “Oh!” Maud said.

  “Oh!” Judy replied.

  The young actress was swamped inside a giant black cloth garment—the Wizard’s coat.

  “What are you doing?” The girl looked alarmed.

  “What are you doing?” Maud said. She held the script tucked under her arm, but Judy, whose face was beet red with embarrassment, wasn’t paying attention to that.

  “You must think I’m an old fool!” Judy said.

  “I don’t think you’re a fool—and certainly not old,” Maud answered, turning her body at an angle to hide the pilfered script. “But what are you doing? Isn’t that the Wizard’s jacket?”

  Judy was already wriggling out of it, her face still crimson.

  “Don’t tell anyone! Don’t you dare!”

  “I won’t breathe a word,” Maud said. “But I have a funny feeling I know what you were up to.”

  Judy raised a single eyebrow.

  “You were hoping for a little bit of magic?” Maud asked gently. “A sign from your father?”

  Judy shook her head and wiped a tear from her now-brimming eyes. “I just thought…I miss him. He used to stick up for me. Now nobody does.”

  “You don’t have to explain. We all need a little bit of magic from time to time.”

  Maud reached out to embrace the girl, forgetting that she was trying to conceal the script. At the same moment, someone called out, “Judy! You’re needed on set!”

  Judy scooped up the heavy cloth coat, looking around nervously, and shoved it onto its hanger. Meanwhile, Maud slipped the stolen script onto the table, planning to retrieve it as soon as Judy exited the room.

  “Judy!” The voice was getting closer.

  “Not a word!” Judy said. “Promise?” She then picked up her basket, scooped up the script, apparently thinking it was hers, and rushed out of the cramped room. As the door slammed behind her, Maud stood in astonished silence. She had lost the script! All that trouble for nothing, and now she was going to have to find a way to sneak out without attracting notice.

  Maud waited a few minutes before emerging. She looked this way and that, then realized that her presence was concealed from the set by several large crates and boxes stacked outside. She glanced around, hoping for an escape route, and her eyes alighted on a door marked LAVATORY.

  Inside, Maud was suddenly confronted with her own reflection in the mirror. She saw a face furrowed and lined, imprinted by
decades of worry, thinned lips pressed together in determination, eyes sharp from her wariness of soft dreams and illusions. And if Frank had been standing beside her? She pictured her husband as she had first known him: his soft lips, so quick to smile; his twinkling eyes, the first to see the humor in any situation. He had tempered her toughness, stayed her worst instincts, teased out the kindness she’d inherited from Papa, and toned down the grit her mother had taught her. What would he think if he could see her right now?

  In her heart, Maud knew. Frank wouldn’t have been focusing on stealing a script when something more important—the welfare of a child—was at stake.

  Her worn face in the mirror was telling her something. Reminding her that of all the roles she had played in her life—tomboy, student, wife, mother, widow, and steward of Frank’s legacy—the most important of these had been mother. Was she really so old that she had grown blind to the plain truth in front of her? No doubt that Judy’s talent, her almost preternatural gift, made her seem older and wiser than her years. Nevertheless, she was still a lonely young girl who missed her father and was looking for someone to take care of her. It was almost eerie, now that Maud thought about it, how terribly fitting it was that Judy was playing the role of Dorothy. Like another young girl long ago, Judy needed someone to help her.

  After several more minutes had elapsed, Maud pushed her way out of the bathroom and crossed toward the set. Mercifully, the actors were standing around while the director fussed over some bit of minutiae with the Tin Man’s ax, and no one heeded her as she picked her way over the camera cables taped to the floor and slunk toward the sound stage exit.

  As Maud drove home, she sorted through her thoughts about this confusing day. Judy and Dorothy, Dorothy and Judy. She now understood that they were one and the same. You couldn’t love the character and look past the girl who was pinned into that gingham dress. Maud’s instinct told her to take the girl—to carry her away—to find a different life for her somewhere where predatory agents and fat men with cigars weren’t all looking to take advantage of her gifts.

  But Maud had learned some bitter lessons in her life—and perhaps one of the hardest was that you can’t always rescue people, no matter how much you want to.

  CHAPTER

  14

  SYRACUSE, NEW YORK

  1886

  Maud staggered down a long hall, flanked by doors on each side. She flung each one open with a bang, but each revealed only an empty room. Far off in the distance, a baby was crying, as faint as the chirping of a tiny bird. The hallway telescoped out in front of her.

  Frank! Maud cried out, but his name, instead of coming out fully formed, wafted out of her mouth like a puffy cloud. Frank!! The words seemed to float above her, a line of vaporous puffs. Suddenly, she was seized by fear. She couldn’t move; she was paralyzed. She twisted and turned, but she was caught up in something. It wrapped around her torso like a vise, so tight, so tight, that she shrieked out in pain.

  “There, there, dear Maud.” Maud opened her eyes and saw Julia leaning over her, wiping her forehead with a cool cloth.

  “You’ve had quite a fever,” Julia said. “I think it’s coming down now.”

  Maud closed her eyes, but again she saw the long hallway, the empty rooms. She opened her eyes, and this time, she saw not just her sister’s face but Frank’s, peering at her with concern.

  “Maud,” Frank said, in the gentlest voice. “Have you come back to us?”

  “But where have I been?” Maud said. Why was she here, in this upstairs bedroom? She was…

  Maud’s hands flew to her belly, but she drew them away quickly—her stomach was hot and painful.

  She closed her eyes again and willed herself to concentrate, but her head was so thick and fuzzy, she couldn’t think straight. Bits and pieces came back to her. She remembered her pains coming in waves; she was standing by the window, looking at the garden.

  Frank’s face was so close she could reach out and touch it, but her arm was too heavy to lift. She could see tears blackening his long lashes.

  “Don’t leave us again, my dearest. I can’t lose you.”

  Through the fog in her mind, through the confusion of the image of the long corridor, she remembered. She remembered that she had given birth. She could remember the lusty cry and the ruddy body slick with the white grease of birth.

  Where is the baby?

  Julia’s face hovered above her.

  “Maud, Maudie dear? Don’t try to talk, just rest…”

  Where is the baby?

  Now a man with whiskers stood over her. She recognized Dr. Winchell. He murmured, “You need to rest.” She felt the sharp stick of a hypodermic, and then everything receded.

  * * *

  —

  MAUD AWOKE TO A bright sun shining in the window. She blinked her eyes and tried to roll to her side, but she felt a sharp pain in her belly and then a gentle hand on her arm.

  “Maud? Are you awake? How are you feeling?”

  Frank had placed a hand on her forehead.

  “You feel cooler.”

  “Frank.” Maud was trying to speak clearly, but her breath came out in a whisper.

  “What is it, dear?”

  “The baby? Where is the baby?”

  “Oh, Maudie dear, don’t trouble yourself about the baby. He’s beautiful, and I’m taking good care of him. You just take care of yourself.”

  “The baby—is okay?” Maud tried to smile, but she felt herself slipping away again.

  * * *

  —

  MATILDA APPLIED A CAMPHOR plaster to Maud’s tender, swollen midsection. Maud’s teeth were chattering, and she shook so violently that the bedstead shuddered against the wall.

  “I’ve brewed you some willow-bark tea to bring your fever down.” Matilda lifted Maud’s head and spooned the tea into her daughter’s mouth.

  Maud heard babies crying. The sound seemed to echo and multiply. How many babies? Why were they crying? Was one of the wails coming from her own child?

  Mother disappeared and Julia arrived. Julia left and the doctor came in. The doctor left and Frank came to rest by her side. And still, the babies cried.

  At one point, Frank said, “I’d like to bring Bunting to see you. Just for a moment. It would cheer him up.”

  At the mention of her son’s name, she felt her face grow wet with tears, even though she didn’t know she was crying.

  Bunting stood in the doorway, one foot crossed over the other, dressed in his nightshirt, his golden hair tousled. He looked like an angel. Maud tried to sit up, only to collapse with a sharp stitch in her side.

  “Hello there, darling,” she whispered, but her voice was so soft he couldn’t hear. She reached down inside herself, pulling up all her strength. “Come in, sweet Bunting, don’t be afraid. It’s just your mama.” She tried to smile.

  The boy darted back down the hallway. Frank disappeared after him.

  Maud closed her eyes. She floated on a dark wave of pain.

  Sometimes when she opened her eyes, she could see the tree outside her window. Bare of leaves, it looked like a giant hand reaching up to a white sky. Maud saw black crows perching on the branches, and she counted them, rhyming in her head: One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy…But then they disappeared, and she wondered if they had ever been there at all.

  * * *

  —

  JULIA KISSED HER CHEEK, smoothed her brow, and told her that she was leaving, going back to Dakota.

  “No, you can’t go!” Maud tried to sit up, but she couldn’t. In the next moment, Julia was gone.

  Songbirds sang outside the window, and the tree was suddenly green, dusted with tiny buds. The sky was bright blue, and scattered across the blue, white fluffy clouds floated like balls of cotton.

  “It is a testament
to your youth and fortitude, and to your family’s devoted care, that you are still alive,” Dr. Winchell said. “I’ve seen few women recover from such a severe puerperal sepsis. But make no mistake, you are not yet fully recovered. The slightest strain or draft of cold can still kill you.”

  Maud was only now beginning to understand what had happened to her. On the third day after childbirth, she had developed the dreaded fever. That she was still alive was nothing short of a miracle. But she could not see for what purpose she had been spared. Five times a day, her nurse placed a folded length of cotton between her legs, and each time, the pad was soaked with the devil’s brew—green and yellow, foul-odored. Her cheeks were sunken and gray, her hip bones stuck out, her arms were useless twigs, and below her umbilicus, where she had once been strong, her belly remained swollen and sore to the touch. Nevertheless, Maud had begun to refuse the morphine injections, determined to uncloud her mind.

  She could see what had happened from the faces of them all—from her frightened little Bunting, who hovered at the sickroom door but refused to come in, from the weary faces of her caretakers, from the softly repeated rosary of the Irish nurse, from the grave way the doctor addressed her—and she understood that she was no longer Maud. She had become that most dreaded household figure: the female invalid.

  “We’ve done everything we can do for you here,” the doctor said. “The only hope is to put you in a sanitarium.”

  Maud lay in the bed, almost too tired to speak. Perhaps Frank expected her to protest, but…but instead, she felt nothing, except for a dark, gray, blank relief that she would no longer be a burden.

  * * *

  —

  DR. VANDER WENK’S SANITARIUM was clean, bright, and quiet. Maud was relieved that her family was spared the sight of the hideous tube that stuck into her belly, draining foul-smelling pus, the same pus that still dripped from between her legs. But here, there was nothing for her to do—no words to say, no loved ones to worry about, no children to cry, no weary face of her husband, no kindness and pity of her mother, no dutiful face of the private nurse.