Almost Famous Women

by Megan Mayhew Bergman

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  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  The Pretty, Grown-Together Children

  The Siege at Whale Cay

  Norma Millay’s Film Noir Period

  Romaine Remains

  Hazel Eaton and the Wall of Death

  The Autobiography of Allegra Byron

  Expression Theory

  Saving Butterfly McQueen

  Who Killed Dolly Wilde?

  A High-Grade Bitch Sits Down for Lunch

  The Internees

  The Lottery, Redux

  Hell-Diving Women

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  About Megan Mayhew Bergman

  For my girls

  ’Tis the white stag, Fame, we’re a-hunting,

  bid the world’s hounds come to horn!

  —EZRA POUND

  You can fill up your life with ideas and still go home lonely.

  —JANIS JOPLIN

  New York denies Violet Hilton, pictured with Daisy, a marriage license, on the grounds that it would be illegal to issue the license to two persons (1934).

  Associated Press photo, July 5, 1934. Reprinted with permission.

  THE PRETTY, GROWN-TOGETHER CHILDREN

  Let me tell it, I said.

  No, you’re a liar and a drunk, she said. Or I said.

  Our voices could be like one. I could feel hers in my bones, especially when she sang—a strong quicksilver soprano. We were attached at the hips and shared blood, but no vital organs. Four arms, four legs—enough to make a man give a second look.

  One of us has to tell it, I said, and it’s going to be me.

  An agent had come to see us. Or that’s what he claimed to be. A talent scout. I couldn’t remember his name. He wore a blue sports coat with heavy gold buttons, jeans, loafers. His hair shone with tonic, and he knew how to shake hands. My bones ached from his grip.

  Look, I said to Violet. I’m a better storyteller than you. You sing, I tell stories.

  Violet didn’t answer. She’d vanished, the way the great Harry Houdini had taught us to do in the RKO Studios cafeteria. When you’re tired of each other, he’d said, imagine retreating into an imaginary shell. A giant conch. Harry was short and bowlegged. His curly hair splayed across his forehead into a heart shape. Separate mentally, he’d said.

  What about when Daisy is indiscreet? With men? Violet had asked. What do I do then?

  Same thing you’ve done in the past, I’d said. Look away.

  Violet was like that. Made her voice rise when she wanted to play innocent. She pretended to be shy. But I could feel her blood get warm when she spoke to men she admired. I could feel her pulse quicken.

  Back in the RKO cafeteria days, we had floor-length raccoon coats, matching luggage, tortoiseshell combs, and high-end lipstick. We had money in the bank. We took taxis. We traveled, kissed famous men. We’d been on film. The thirties, forties, even the fifties. Those had been our decades. We had thrived.

  In the RKO days, people thought our body was the work of God.

  But now we were two old showgirls bagging groceries at the Sack and Save in Aberdeen. There were no more husbands, no boyfriends. Just fat women and their dirty-nosed children pointing fingers in the grocery line.

  Can y’all help us get these bags out to the car, they’d ask.

  I never met so many mean-hearted women in my life. Violet and I were still able-bodied, but we were old. Our knuckles hurt from loading bags. Our knees swelled from all the standing. But we’d do it to keep our boss happy, hauling paper bags to station wagons in the parking lot.

  I jes’ want to see it walk, the kids would whisper.

  We lived behind the grocer’s house in a single-wide trailer with a double bed and a hot plate. Mice ran through the walls, ate holes in our cereal boxes.

  Look, the agent said. I’m going to come back tomorrow and we’re going to talk about some projects I have in mind.

  Come after supper, I said.

  Houdini had told us: never appear eager to be famous.

  The agent came closer. His cologne was fresh. He made Violet nervous, but not me. He reached for each of our hands and kissed our knuckles.

  Until then, he said, and disappeared through the screen door. The distinctive sound of the summer night rushed inside. Cicadas, dry leaves rattling in the woods, a single car on the dirt road.

  Some nights Violet and I sat on the cinder-block steps outside, rubbing our bare toes in the cool dirt, painting our nails. Like most twins, we didn’t have to talk. We were somewhere between singular and plural.

  After the agent left, Violet and I sat on an old velour couch, turning slightly away from each other as our bodies mandated. I forgot how long we’d been sitting there. There were framed pictures of people we didn’t know on the walls. The kitchen table had three legs. One had been chewed and hovered over the linoleum like a bum foot. The curtains smelled like tobacco. The radio was tuned to a stock car race.

  Rex White takes second consecutive pole.

  Violet was still, hands on her knees. She was probably thinking about an old boyfriend she had once. Ed. Violet had really loved Ed. He was a boxer with a mangled face and strange ears that I didn’t care for. He wasn’t fit for a star, I told her. When she went into her shell I figured that’s who she went there with.

  I was hot and dizzy. Our trailer had no air-conditioning.

  Postmenopausal, I figured. I needed water.

  I stood up.

  Violet came out of her imaginary shell.

  We have to get some money, she said, as we moved toward the sink. We have to get out of here. I have paper cuts from the grocery bags. My ankles are swollen. How come you never want to sit down?

  I’m working on it, I said. Besides, we’re professionals. We’ve got something left to offer the world.

  I let the faucet sputter until the water ran clear.

  One of us could die, I said. And they’d have to cut the other loose.

  So that’s what it takes, Violet said and disappeared into herself again.

  I was told our mother was disgusted when she tried to breast-feed us.

  Just a limp tangle of arms and legs. Too many heads to keep happy, Miss Hadley said. Lips everywhere. Strange cries.

  Miss Hadley was our guardian. We lived with her in a ramshackle house that was part yellow, part white—an eyesore on the nice side of town. The magnolia trees were overgrown and scratched the windows. The screened-in porch was packed with magazines, rusted bikes, broken lamps, boxes of old clothes and library books.

  Weren’t for me you’d be dead, Miss Hadley said. I saved you.

  Like stacks of coupons and magazines—we were one of the things Miss Hadley collected, lined her nest with.

  Once, when you was toddlers, you got out the door nekkid and upset the neighborhood, she said. She liked to remind us, or maybe herself, of her generosity. Her ability to tolerate.

  Carolina-born, Miss Hadley looked like she was a hundred years old. Her cheeks sank downward. She had a fleshy chin and a mouthful of bad teeth.

  Daisy, she’d say, I’m fixin to get after you.

  And she would. She once threw a raw potato at my forehead when she found me rummaging in the pantry after dinner. Miss Hadley slapped my knees and arms with the flyswatter when I talked back. Sometimes she’d get Violet by accident.

&nb
sp; She ain’t do nothing to you, I’d say. Leave her be.

  Don’t sass me, she’d say. You’ve got the awfulest mouth for a girl your age.

  When we were young, Violet and I had the thickest bangs you’d ever seen, enormous bows in our hair. There were velvet ribbons around our waists, custom lace dresses, music lessons. We were almost pretty.

  We learned how to smile graciously, how to bask in the charity of the Christian women in the neighborhood. We learned to use the toilet at the same time. We helped each other with homework and chores.

  Miss Hadley kept a dirty house, scummy dishes in the sink. There was hair on the floor, toilets that didn’t work, litters of rescued dogs that commanded the couch. Her stained-glass windows were cracked. The front door was drafty. Entire rooms were filled with newspapers. Her husband was dead (if she’d ever really had one) and she had no children except for us. Looking back, we weren’t her children at all. We were a business venture.

  We fired the shotgun at Beaufort’s Terrapin Races, presented first place ribbons at hog and collard festivals. We tap-danced with Bob Hope. We crowned Wilson’s tobacco queens, opened for the Bluegrass Boys at various music halls. We knew high-stepping cloggers, competitive eaters, the local strong men. We knew showmanship.

  I remember my line from the Terrapin Races: And now, ladies and gentlemen, the tortoise race. Years later, when I woke up in the middle of the night in a hot flash, that line would come to me.

  We didn’t know to be unhappy. Violet and I—we didn’t know we were getting robbed blind. We didn’t know about all the money we’d made for Miss Hadley.

  I don’t charge you rent, she said at the dinner table. But I should charge for those hungry mouths.

  We believed ourselves to be in her debt. We were grateful, even.

  Miss Hadley’s yard was overgrown with ivy, honeysuckle, and scuppernong vines. When we hated what she’d made for dinner—she was a terrible cook—we’d go out hunting scuppernongs, eat them fresh off the vine. I liked them best when they looked like small potatoes, soft, golden, and dusty. I had to tug Violet out the front door to eat them. If we came in smelling of fruit, Miss Hadley would come after us with the switches.

  Ya’ll been eating scuppanons again, she’d say, catching the backs of our legs. Scuppydines is for poor kids.

  We lived in what had been the maid’s room, behind the kitchen. We shared a double bed, slept back-to-back. There was a poster of President Hoover tacked to the wall. Violet papered our drawers with sheet music and hid licorice in her underwear. Miss Hadley had lined the room in carpet samples. I kept a cracker tin full of movie stubs and magazines.

  Violet and I lay in bed at night talking about the latest sheet music, or a boy who had come with his parents to see us play at the music hall. We talked about lace socks, traveling to Spain, how we’d one day hear ourselves on the radio, learn to dance beautifully with a partner on each side.

  I want to waltz, Violet said.

  I want a new dress first, I said. Or to sing “April in Paris” onstage.

  Teaching you to walk was some ugly business, Miss Hadley often said. Dancing—I can only imagine. You girls need to work at sitting still, staying pretty. That’s why you’ve learned to read music.

  Violet and I—we had thick skin.

  We slept with an army of rescued greyhounds, lithe and flea-bitten, in our bed at night. We fed them dinner rolls, put our fingers on their dull teeth, let them keep us warm.

  There were no secrets. Imagine: you could say nothing, do nothing, eat nothing, touch nothing, love nothing without the other knowing.

  Like King Tut’s death mask, we were exhibited.

  The calling card, as I remember it: “If we have interested you, kindly tell your friends to come visit us.” The Pretty, Grown-Together Children.

  There were boxes of these in Miss Hadley’s basement, a few scattered across the kitchen table. Stacks in every grocery store and Laundromat in town.

  Hear the twins sing “Dream a Little Dream of Me.” Hear the twins recite Lord Byron’s “Fare Thee Well.”

  Miss Hadley sat us on a piano bench or leather trunk to play our instruments. We crossed our legs at the ankles. She set out a blue glass vase, which she instructed visitors to deposit money into.

  I took in these girls out of the goodness of my heart, she’d say, and I’d appreciate you donating from the goodness of yours so that they can continue their music lessons.

  Bless your hearts, the ladies would say, coming up close to inspect us.

  Children would ask: Does it hurt? Do you fight? You think about cutting that skin yourself?

  It did not hurt to be joined—we knew no difference. As for fighting, yes, but we were masters of compromise: I’ll read books now if you’ll go walking later. You pick the movie this week and I’ll pick next. We can get in bed but I’m going to keep the lamp on so I can read. We can sleep in but you owe me a dollar.

  At night, our legs intertwined. This was not like touching someone else’s leg. It wasn’t like touching my own, either. It was comforting, warm. We were, despite our minds’ best efforts, one body.

  You kick, Violet told me. You dream violent dreams.

  Your arms twitch, I said, though it wasn’t true.

  After Miss Hadley’s death, when the movers began emptying her house, our flyers were used to protect the dishes. We were wadded up and stuffed into teacups. Our advertisements scattered across her dry yard. Scuppernongs lay bird-picked and smashed on the lawn. The greyhounds were leashed to the front porch. I could see the sun shining through the translucent skin on their heels. I remember thinking—what now?

  When Miss Hadley got the fever we were willed to her cousin Samson like a house. I’m afraid to tell you about the kind of man he was, how our skin got thicker. I’ll tell you this. His house was dark, unpainted, and smelled of pipe smoke. Samson did not shower or shave. He didn’t parade us in public or charge to hear us play music. In fact, the music lessons stopped. He kept us inside. He had other interests.

  C’mere, sweetmeats, he used to say, patting his lap.

  Ya’lls never been loved properly, he’d say.

  There were months when we did not leave the house other than for school and church. It occurred to us to be depressed about our situation, scared. This was the first time we had been truly unhappy.

  We were sixteen. One night we packed a bag of our best clothes, her saxophone, my violin. We waited until Samson was good and drunk, then snuck out the back door and caught a bus to New York. We’d never moved so fast together, never been so in sync.

  The bag is heavy, Violet said. And my feet hurt in these pumps.

  It’s worth every blister, I said. Trust me.

  Each step I thought of his breath. Each step I thought of his fingers. The pain went away.

  We made it to the station, sweating in our high heels with turned ankles and empty stomachs.

  Violet and I swore, in the backseat of that bus to New York, that we’d never mention Samson again. We’d pretend the things he’d done had never happened. The bruises on our thighs would heal and the patches of our hair would grow back. Until then we’d wear hats. We’d practice music on our own. We’d get back into the business.

  When we couldn’t pay the bus driver, he dropped us off at the police station. We were freezing. We’d never had a jacket made to fit us.

  Put on your lipstick, I said to Violet.

  I still like to think of that dime-store lipstick. It was soft and crimson and made me feel beautiful.

  Excuse me, I said to a man smoking a cigarette on the cement steps.

  He looked up at us in disbelief. He wore a three-piece suit and a tweed cap. His lips were full, and it hurt me to watch him sink his front teeth into his bottom lip.

  I could see my breath in the air. The sound of New York was different than the sound of Miss Hadley’s backyard. The street looked wet; there were bricks everywhere, lights lining the sidewalks. We were petrified. I could feel Viole
t’s blood pressure rising.

  I never seen something so pretty and so strange, he said.

  And that’s how we got hooked up with Martin Lambert.

  The agent will be back tomorrow, I said to Violet.

  I can’t read this if you’re going to keep pacing, she said, trying to get through an old copy of Reader’s Digest while I bustled about the bedroom.

  Our bed in the grocer’s trailer had one set of threadbare sheets and a pale pink quilt. I picked at the frayed edges when I couldn’t sleep.

  Are you eating another cookie? I asked.

  Old stock, Violet said, crumbs on her mouth. Someone has to eat them. Grocer was going to throw them out.

  Our cupboard was filled with dented soup cans and out-of-date beans. The grocer let us take a bag of expired food home at the end of each week.

  I noticed the lines around Violet’s eyes. I guessed they were around mine too. Our skin was getting thinner, our bones fragile.

  Help me get this suitcase on the bed, I said.

  Violet used one hand to help.

  Between us we had one brown leather suitcase full of custom clothes. There were dresses, bathing suits, pants, and nightgowns. Those we’d had for decades were moth-eaten and thin.

  We’ve gotta mend these, I said. And not get fat.

  No one’s looking, she said, her mouth full of stale oatmeal cookie.

  The agent is looking, I said.

  This wasn’t the first time Violet had tried to sabotage our success. Once, she’d dyed her hair blond. Then she tried to get fat. Every time I turned around in the forties she was eating red velvet cupcakes.

  Your teeth are gonna go blood red from all that food coloring, I warned.

  We had enough strikes against us in the looks department. One of Violet’s eyes sloped downward, as if it might slide off her face. I hated that eye. I felt like we could have been more without it. Like Virginia Mayo or Eve Arden or someone with a good wardrobe and a contract or two.