“Yeah?” the woman in charge said, amused, “you a dancer?”
“I was.”
“With who?”
She swallowed hard, knowing she looked too prim in her simple black Chanel dress. She should have worn something brighter and more racy, but she had sold all her evening clothes long since, and all she had were the somber, warm dresses she had salvaged from her closets at Sutton Place, the ones she knew she might have use for in the freezing cold apartment.
“I danced with the Ballet Russe in Paris. I trained in Russia before that.”
“A ballerina, eh?” The thought seemed to amuse her beyond words, as Zoya stood quietly, her red hair pulled tightly back, her face without makeup. “Listen, lady, this ain't a retirement home for old ballerinas. This is Fitzhugh's Dance Hall!” She said it with fierce pride, and Zoya felt a sudden surge of fury.
“I'm twenty-five,” she lied, “and I used to be very good.”
“Yeah? At what? You ain't done nothing like this before, I'll bet.” That much was true, but she was willing to do anything to save her children. She remembered suddenly her audition for the Ballet Russe thirteen years before in Paris.
“Let me try … just once … I can learn … please …” Her eyes filled with tears in spite of herself, as a small round man with a cigar walked past, glancing at her only briefly and then shouting at two men carrying scenery between them.
“Stupid jerks! You're gonna break that thing!” And then, in obvious annoyance he waved the cigar at the woman talking to Zoya. “Goddamn girls got the measles … can you beat that? I've got myself a bunch of old hoofers on my hands and they get sick like a bunch of goddamn kids … three of them out last week … seven more now … shit, what am I supposed to tell people paying good money to see the show? That they can watch a bunch of broads with spots waving their asses at them. I'd even do that if they'd come to goddamn work.” He waved the cigar at Zoya and then beyond her, as though she didn't exist, and to him, she didn't.
Without waiting for him to address her directly, she spoke up for herself, “I'd like to audition for a job as a dancer.” Her accent was slight now but still obvious, but neither of them recognized her as Russian. The woman had thought she was French, in her expensively cut black dress and her elegant airs. That was one thing they didn't need at Fitzhugh's Dance Hall.
“You a hoofer?” He turned to look at her appraisingly but he didn't seem impressed.
“Yes.” She decided to spare him the explanation.
“A ballerina,” the other woman spoke up with obvious disdain.
“You had the measles?” he asked her. That was far more important to him with ten dancers out sick, and God only knew how many exposed and due to come down with it in the ensuing weeks.
“Yes, I have,” she murmured as she prayed that she could still dance. Maybe she'd forgotten everything. Maybe …
He shrugged, and stuck the dead cigar back into his face. “Let her show you her stuff, Maggie. If she can stand up and do anything, she can stay till the others come back.” He left them then and the woman named Maggie looked annoyed. The last thing they needed was some fancy-assed, pale-faced broad who thought she was too good for a burlesque show. But he had a point, with the others sick, they were in big trouble.
‘Okay,” she said reluctantly, and then shouted backstage. “Jimmy! Get your ass out here and play!” A black man with a broad smile appeared and looked at Zoya.
“Hi, baby, what you want me to play?” he asked her as he sat down at the piano. And she almost laughed in nervous terror. What could she say to him? Chopin? Debussy? Stravinsky?
“What do you usually play for an audition?” she asked him, and he smiled into her eyes. It was easy to see that she was high-class white folks fallen on bad times, and he felt sorry for her, with her big green eyes and wistful smile. She looked like a kid as she stood there, and he wondered if she'd ever danced before. He had heard of others like her who'd gone to work in nightclubs, doing acts they made up themselves, like Cobina Wright and Cobina Junior.
“Where you from?” Maggie was momentarily talking to someone else as they chatted. And Jimmy decided that he liked her.
She smiled openly at him, still praying that she wouldn't make a fool of herself, but even the risk of that was worth it. “From Russia, a long time ago. I came here after the war.”
And then he lowered his voice and glanced nervously over his shoulder. “You ever danced before, baby? Tell me the truth, while Maggie ain't listenin’. You can tell Jimmy. I cain't help you if I don't know if you can dance.”
“I was in the ballet when I was young. I haven't danced in eleven years,” she whispered back, grateful for his assistance.
“My, my, my …” He shook his head in distress. “The Fitzhugh ain't no ballet …” That was surely the understatement of the year, as two half-naked chorus girls wandered past them. “Look,” he said to her in conspiratorial tones, “I'm gonna play real slow, you just roll your eyes and smile, hop around a little bit, shake yo’ bum and show yo’ legs, and you gonna be just fine. You got a costume with you?” But he knew from the look in her eyes, that she didn't.
“I'm sorry, I …”
“Never mind.” And with that Maggie turned her attention to them again.
“You gonna sit on your fat black ass all day, Jimmy, or are we going to do an audition? Personally, I don't give a damn, but Charlie wants me to see her do her stuff.” She looked malevolently at Zoya, as she prayed that she wouldn't fail dismally. But she followed his suggestions as he played and Charlie, the director, wandered past again, muttering as he watched her. He wanted her to hurry up so he could audition two new comedians and a stripper.
“Shit. Just what I don't need here … a lady.” He said it like the ultimate insult,“… Shake your ass … there, that's it … let's see those legs … more …” She hiked up her skirt as she blushed and continued to dance as Jimmy rooted for her. She had beautiful legs, and the grace that had come from thirteen years of dancing had never left her. “What are you for chrissake?” The short fat man bellowed at her as she blushed, “A virgin? People don't come here to pray. They come here to watch broads dance. You think you can do that without looking like you just been raped?”
“I'll try, sir … I'll do my best “
“Good. Then be back here tonight at eight o'clock.” Maggie stalked off in obvious disgust as he left, and Jimmy gave a cheer, and jumped up to give Zoya a hug.
“Hey, Mama! We did it!”
“I can't thank you enough,” she shook his hand and her eyes thanked him warmly. “I have two children, I … we …” She was suddenly fighting back tears, as the old black man watched her, “I need the job very badly …” The tears spilled onto her cheeks as she wiped them away with embarrassed relief, unable to speak for a moment.
“Don't you worry. You gonna do just fine. See you tonight.” He smiled and went back to the card game he'd been losing when Maggie called him.
Zoya walked all the way home to the apartment, and thought about what she'd done. Unlike her audition with the Ballet Russe years before, there was no feeling of victory and achievement. Just relief that she had a job and an overwhelming sense of embarrassment and degradation, but it was the only thing she could do, and it was at night, she wouldn't have to leave Sasha with people she didn't know. For the moment, it seemed like the perfect job, except that it was so awful.
She explained to Nicholas that night that she had to go out. She didn't say why or where she was going. She didn't want to have to explain to him that she'd taken a job as a chorus girl. The echo of Charlie's words still rang in her ear … “shake your ass … let's see those legs … what are you? A virgin? …” To their way of thinking, she was. At almost thirty-one years of age, in spite of the hardships in her life, she had always been protected from people like him, and the people she was going to dance for.
“Where are you going, Mama?”
“Out for a little while.” She had alrea
dy put Sasha to bed. “Don't stay up too late,” she admonished and kissed him, hugging him for a moment as though she were about to go to her own execution. “Go to bed in half an hour.”
“When will you be back?” He eyed her suspiciously from his bedroom door.
“Later.”
“Is something wrong, Mama?” He was a perceptive child, and he was learning early about the cruel turns of fate that could change the course of a lifetime in a single moment.
“No, nothing's wrong, sweetheart.” She smiled at him then. “I promise.” At least they would have a little money.
But she was in no way prepared for what it would be like, the crude jokes, the vulgar girls, the sleazy costumes, and the comedians who pinched her behind as she hurried past them. But when the music began, and the curtain went up, she did her best for the jeering, laughing, excited crowd, and no one complained when she was out of step more than once. Unlike the Ballet Russe of long ago, here no one knew the difference. All they wanted to see was a good show of gams, and a bunch of pretty girls with most of their clothes off. There were sequins and beads, little satin shorts, and matching hats, and countless feather boas and huge headdresses. It was a cheap imitation of what the Ziegfeld girls wore, and more than once she silently bemoaned her fate at having been too short to be hired by the kindly Florenz Ziegfeld. Zoya gave her costumes back to the girl who had lent them to her, and she walked slowly home, with her stage makeup still on. She was even more shocked when a man scurrying past, offered her a nickel for “the best she could do for him,” in a nearby doorway. She ran the rest of the way home, with tears streaming down her face, thinking of the awful life that lay ahead of her at Fitzhugh's Dance Hall.
Nicholas was sound asleep when she got back and she kissed him gently, her lipstick smearing his cheek as she cried, thinking how sweet he looked as he slept, and how much like his father. It wasn't possible that he was gone … that he had left her to this … if only he had known … if only … but it was too late for that. She tiptoed back into the living room where she slept, took her makeup off and changed into her nightgown. Gone the silks and satins and laces. She had to wear heavy flannel gowns against the bitter cold of the barely heated apartment.
And in the morning, she made Nicholas breakfast before he left for school. There was a glass of milk, a slice of bread, and a single orange she had bought the day before, but he never complained. He only smiled at her and patted her hand, and hurried off to school, after kissing Sasha.
And that night she went back to the theater again, as she did for the next weeks until the dancers returned from their measles. But when they did, Charlie gruffly told her they'd keep her on, she had good legs, and she didn't give him any trouble. Jimmy bought her a beer to celebrate, purloined from his favorite speakeasy nearby. She thanked him and took a sip not to hurt his feelings. She didn't tell him that it was her thirty-first birthday.
He was always kind to her, the only friend she had there. The others had sensed instantly that she was “different.” They never shared their jokes with her, in fact they barely talked to her, as they told tales of their boyfriends, and the men who followed them backstage. More than one of them ran off with men who offered them a little money. It was what Charlie liked about her. She wasn't much fun to have around, but at least she was steady. They gave her a raise after the first year. She couldn't believe herself that she had stayed that long, but there was no way out, nowhere else to go, and no one who would pay her. She told Nicholas that she danced with a small ballet and she left the theater number with him in case anything happened. But she thanked God he never called her. And sensing that she was ashamed of what she did, he never asked to go to a performance. And for that, and all his little tendernesses toward her, she was always grateful. One night Sasha had woken up with a cough, and a fever, and Nicholas was waiting up for her, but he hadn't wanted to call her at the theater and worry her. In every way, he was a help to her and an enormous comfort.
“Will we ever see our old friends again?” he asked her quietly one afternoon, as she cut his hair, and Sasha played with Sava.
“I don't know, sweetheart.” She'd had a letter from their nurse months before. She was happy with the Van Alens, and she had been full of tales of Barbara Hutton's debut the summer before, and Doris Duke's in Newport. It seemed ironic that she was still part of that world, and Zoya wasn't. But just as they had shunned her when she first arrived, convinced that she had been a dancer at the Folies-Bergdre, now she shunned them, knowing that she was at last what they had first thought, a chorus girl. She knew also that, having lost everything like so many others of their milieu, she was no longer of interest to them. The countess she had been, who had so impressed them once, was no more. She was no one now. Just a common dancer. The waters had closed over her. She was gone. Just like Clayton, and so many others. The only one she missed from time to time, was Serge Obolensky, and his coterie of noble Russians. But they couldn't possibly have understood what had become of her life, or why she did what she did. He was still married to Alice Astor.
Elsa Maxwell was writing a society column by then, and occasionally when Zoya read the newspapers, she read Cholly Knickerbocker's tales of the people she had known while she was married to Clayton. They all seemed so unreal to her now, almost as though she had never known them. There were stories of financial ruin, suicides, marriages, divorces. She was only grateful not to be listed among them. She read also of Pavlova's death of pleurisy in The Hague. And in May, she took the children to see the opening of the Empire State Building. It was 1931 by then, and a beautiful May afternoon. Nicholas stared in awe at the imposing structure. They went up in the elevator and stood on the observation platform on the hundred and second floor, and even Zoya felt as though she were flying. It was the happiest afternoon they had spent in a long time, and they walked back to the apartment in the balmy spring air, as Sasha ran ahead of them laughing and playing. She was six years old by then, and had a beautiful head of strawberry-gold curls, and a face just like Clayton's.
People were selling apples on the street as they walked past, and more than one woman admired the two beautiful children. Nicholas was going to be ten in August, but long before that, the city lay crushed by the oppressive heat. And the second of July was the hottest day ever recorded. Both children were still awake when she left for work, in a white cotton dress, embroidered with little blue flowers. Nicholas knew that she worked, but he still didn't understand where, and somehow it didn't seem important.
She left a pitcher of lemonade for them, and reminded Nicholas to watch Sasha. The windows were wide open in the hope of bringing some air into the furnace-like apartment.
“Don't let her sit too close to the windows,” Zoya warned, and watched Nicholas pull the golden-haired child back into their bedroom. She was wearing only a slip and bare feet and looked angelic as she waved good-bye to her mother. “You'll be all right?” she asked, as she always did, when she left them, her heart aching at having to leave them at all, and her heart heavy as she walked uptown to the theater. She could hardly move in the torrid heat, even at night the street seemed to steam beneath her feet, and the holes in her shoes made it even more uncomfortable to walk. She wondered where it would all end sometimes, how they would survive, how long she could go prancing around on the stage in her plumes and ridiculous costumes.
The performance was poorly attended that night, it was too hot to go anywhere. The people who still could had retreated to Newport and Long Island, and the others were languishing at home in the heat, or sitting on stoops, hoping it would break soon. She was exhausted when she finally walked home again, and she thought nothing of it as she heard the sirens in the distance. It was only when she neared her street that she smelled the acrid smoke, and then her whole body shook as she saw the fire engines and what looked like the entire block in flames as she turned the corner. She gasped in horror as she began to run, and an icy hand seemed to clutch her throat as she saw the fire engines
outside their building.
“No! … no! …” She was crying as she tried to force her way through the crowds who stood in the street staring up at the three buildings in flames. There was smoke everywhere and she choked as she pushed her way past, and was stopped by the firemen at the door of her building.
“You can't go in there, lady! …” They were calling to each other in the midst of the fierce crackling sounds, punctuated by terrifying crashing noises. There was glass exploding everywhere, and her arm was cut, and began to bleed on the white dress as one of the men held her back forcefully. “I said you can't go in there!”
“My children!” she gasped … “My babies …” She was wrestling with him with strength she didn't know she had, and for a moment she escaped his grip and then he caught her again as she tried to run past him. “Let me go!” She swung at him, and he grasped her arms in his powerful hands, as the neighbors looked on in silent horror. “My children are in there … oh, God … please …” She was sobbing uncontrollably, almost overcome by the smoke that burned her eyes and her throat as he called to two of the men rushing back into the building. They had already brought out several old women, and a young man was unconscious on the street, while two firemen tried to revive him.
“Hey, Joe!” the fireman called to one of the others, and then turned quickly to Zoya. “Where are they, lady? Which apartment?”
“The top floor … a boy and a girl …” She choked in the smoke-filled air, she had already seen that their ladders didn't go past the third floor.“… Let me go … please … please …” She fell against him, as he relayed the information to the two men, and they hurried back into the building for what seemed like hours … as Zoya watched, knowing that if they died, her life would finally be over. They were all she had left in the world, all she cared about, all she had to live for. But the firemen did not emerge again, and three more went in, with axes and anxious faces. There was a terrifying crashing sound, and an explosion of sparks and flames as part of the roof caved in, and Zoya almost fainted as she watched it. Her eyes were filled with terror, and suddenly she darted forward, determined to find them, or die with them. She slipped past the firemen too quickly as she ran into the hall, but then, in answer to her prayers, she saw the firemen rushing toward her through the thick smoke, two of them with bundles in their arms, and she heard a child crying through the roar of the flames. She saw that it was Nicholas waving his arms, and crying out to her, as the third fireman swept her into his own arms, like a child, and the three men rushed from the building with their precious burdens, just as the fire reached out to engulf them. They barely reached the street before the whole building sounded as though it were caving in. There was a wall of flames behind them as they ran, and Nicholas clung to her, coughing and crying her name, as she kissed his face over and over again and then she saw that Sasha was unconscious. She knelt on the sidewalk beside her child, moaning and calling her name, as the firemen worked desperately to save her, and then slowly, with a small cry, she stirred, and Zoya lay down beside her and cried as she stroked her curls and held her.
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