Dedication
For Michael, always.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Part One
The boy was born in the Scarsenguard Theater on West Forty-Third Street during the intermission of These Dreams We Cherish. His mother, Vivian Fair, had just flawlessly delivered the rousing speech that concluded act 1. As soon as the curtains touched the boards, thunderous applause still ringing in her ears, Vivian waddled backstage, closed the door to her dressing room, and delivered, not a stirring monologue, but her son. She plopped the screeching, slimy creature into a basketful of soiled blouses, severed the umbilical cord with an eyelash curler, and was back in the wings just in time for places, a consummate professional.
The play over, Miss Fair was removing her wig when the baby’s cry startled her so that she nearly stabbed herself with a bobby pin.
A baby. She’d nearly forgotten. Vivian walked over to the basket and peered down at the newborn. Such a pathetic creature. Wrinkly and red and so very small, his tiny fists bunched, punching the air.
A sharp knock on her door caused Vivian to curse. She tossed a shawl over the newborn to hide it just as the knocker, a silly costar of Vivian’s with less talent than a coffee mug, poked her head in.
“Oh, sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you,” said the costar.
“What do you want?” Vivian snapped.
“Didn’t you hear? A producer was in the audience tonight. From Hollywood! He’s at Carlisle’s now!”
“Hollywood!” Vivian cried, clutching her neck. “Give me three minutes—I’ll meet you outside.”
With expertise, Vivian applied a becoming smear of lipstick, tousled her hair, and looked ready for even the most scrutinizing of closeups.
“You’re a star,” she whispered to her reflection.
The baby cried again.
Now here was a decision. She’d told no one about the pregnancy. These Dreams We Cherish was a period drama; hoop skirts had concealed her belly for months. And she certainly hadn’t told the father, whoever he was. Vivian had been meaning to deal with the situation, to make arrangements, but life kept interfering: an opening, a party, a gala. Events like that were important to her career, she’d thought. She’d figure out what to do about the baby later.
But now that the child had officially arrived, she found she wasn’t ready to be a mother. Not in the slightest. There was still so much she wanted to achieve.
Someone would find the boy and give him a marvelous home. Or that’s what she told herself as she dashed off to Carlisle’s with the rest of the cast for an evening of sidecars and schmoozing.
Much later that evening, as Vivian was kissing the bigwig Hollywood producer, he whispered to her what she’d told her reflection just a few hours prior.
“You’re a star.”
Vivian smiled, knowing she’d made the right decision.
Motherhood would be so horrible for her image.
* * *
Eugenia Butler was old. Ancient even. Brittle, bitter, and biting, she’d been employed as the Scarsenguard Theater’s laundress longer than anyone could remember. Longer than even she could remember.
Eugenia liked her work. And even if she didn’t, how else was she going to spend her evenings? Alone? Her mother had left her a quaint brownstone on East Twenty-Third Street, and though she loved it, Eugenia didn’t need to wander through an empty house every night. She preferred to keep busy.
So the day after her mother passed, Eugenia went out and secured herself a job at the Scarsenguard. What year had that been? It was 1933 now. Or was it ’34? Whatever year it was, her mother had most certainly died in 1865. Or somewhere right around there. Eugenia shrugged. Numbers had never been her strong suit. Common sense, good tailoring, and a solid work ethic were her gifts. The Scarsenguard was a perfect fit.
So though she enjoyed her job, Eugenia was dreading a certain aspect of it that particular evening: collecting Vivian Fair’s wash. Though the actress was a smash onstage, behind the curtain she was chronically untidy.
“A goddamn slob is what she is,” Miss Butler mumbled as she started to paw through the considerable mess. As she toed her way through the detritus, her foggy hearing suddenly registered a foreign, hiccuping squall. Pushing aside a bouquet of decaying roses, she stumbled on a basket of blouses and the baby that lay within.
It should be noted that Eugenia Butler, even at her wizened age, was a Miss Butler. Unmarried. A spinster. And it must be said that as a spinster, Eugenia Butler had never had a child. In fact, she had always prided herself on her lack of motherly instinct. Yet when Eugenia saw that babe in the basket, still slick with afterbirth, something in her ancient, unmarried heart fissured. She took the slippery foundling to her breast, plucked a wilting chrysanthemum from a half-drunk flute of champagne, and pressed the glass to the baby’s lips. The boy sucked down the booze greedily while his wild eyes met those of Eugenia, and shortly thereafter he fell into a contented sleep.
Using a discarded brassiere, Eugenia Butler fashioned a papoose for the child and carried him about the rest of the evening, crooning half-forgotten snippets of lullabies and censored fragments of bawdy bar tunes.
The wash finished, Miss Butler wrapped the child in muslin and placed him in a crib she’d uncovered in the prop closet. After shutting off all the lights, she made her way out the stage door and caught a cab to her home at East Twenty-Third Street, a soft smile on her lips as she airily planned for the darling boy’s future. She felt no guilt about leaving a newborn alone in a theater. After all, how the hell was she supposed to fall asleep with a baby crying all night?
* * *
That the boy survived his infancy was perhaps the greatest miracle in his miraculous life. Eugenia Butler, for all her good intentions, was a wretched mother, though she did manage to pick up enough formula that the boy’s diet didn’t consist solely of flat champagne.
In the beginning, Eugenia debated taking the baby to an orphanage so that he could find a proper family, but she kept putting it off. The boy was entertaining, and she found she liked lecturing a male who couldn’t talk back. Eventually adoption was scrapped; Eugenia decided to keep him.
Justifying the sudden appearance of an infant in the Scarsenguard did pose a problem, but Eugenia resolved to simply hide the boy until she could think of a convincing explanation for his existence.
In those early years, keeping the boy undetected was a breeze. Actors are, in general, a self-absorbed lot. If performers ever heard the infant cry or squeal, Miss Butler would quickly ask them about their careers. Their meandering speeches concerning auditions and agents always outlasted any outburst from the baby.
The stage managers and the behind-the-scenes crew were more attuned to their surroundings than their onstage counterparts, but in hopes of avoiding the tyrannical demands of actors, the stagehands had long learned to keep their eyes on the ground and their thoughts to themselves. It was easier to ignore the fact that a baby was regularly heard screeching its way through act 2. Besides, it might be nothing but the wind or a randy tomcat.
And so the boy’s presence remained unknown to anyone but the aging Eugenia Butler. It was nearly a year into the child’s life before Eugenia realized she’d yet to christen the orphan; up to that point she’d called him “baby” or “the baby,” or sometimes “little baby.” Flipping through a calendar, she fi
nally settled on a name: August March.
* * *
Soon August was mobile. Crawling, walking, running, climbing, falling; if it was dangerous, August was doing it. As a toddler, he excelled at all the toddling things toddlers are famous for. Try though she might, Eugenia Butler couldn’t keep up with the boy. And by the time he was three and a half, she realized she could not keep August completely secret. Due to his increasing size, Miss Butler could no longer spirit him away whenever awkward questions were posed, or claim he was a rather lifelike prop.
Besides, he’d grown insatiably curious. Eugenia tried to keep August anxious about the human race as a whole with the occasional offhanded remark.
“It’d be such a shame if you were kidnapped like the last little one who lived here.” Or, “Everyone in the world is a witch except for me and you, kid.”
But despite these terrifying asides, August’s inquisitive nature didn’t seem to be a passing phase.
Still, Eugenia Butler had grown quite fond of August March; she found she actually enjoyed motherhood, except for all the parts of it that she didn’t. One night, after everyone had left the Scarsenguard, Eugenia watched August carry on an animated one-sided conversation with a dress form and realized that she loved him. Loved him more dearly than she had ever loved anyone in her entire life. So, loath to have her companion taken away from her by child services or another ridiculous organization, Miss Butler put her wits to work.
After years of working in the theater, Eugenia Butler knew a thing or two about its inhabitants. Other than narcissism, actors are most famous for their superstition. Just whisper the word Macbeth inside a theater and watch as a group of grown adults crumble into delirium. It was this penchant for excess that Eugenia Butler planned to capitalize on.
A new play, Father’s Farthing, had come to the theater, and after a few days’ reconnaissance, Miss Butler had singled out the silliest, most impressionable ingenue from the cast, a girl by the name of Evelyn Rose.
The second preview performance had just concluded, and Evelyn Rose was the last out of costume. She was under the impression that to arrive at the bar simply fashionably late was gauche. One had to be spectacularly late, or why bother attending at all? Evelyn glided toward Eugenia, breezily dropping her soiled stockings into the bin at the old woman’s feet.
“Good night, Miss Butler,” Evelyn whispered, tears threatening to pool in her eyes as she soaked in this miserable old woman. God, how she longed for a mirror; these almost-tears probably looked fantastic.
“Good night, my dear,” sighed Eugenia. Then, as Evelyn Rose was turning away, Eugenia gripped the young girl’s wrist and drew in a great, rattling gasp. “He’s here!” she cried.
Evelyn’s wistful melancholy was quickly replaced by revulsion. While trying to win back her wrist, she surveyed the area. “Who’s here?” she asked.
Eugenia adopted her most ominous voice. “He comes at night, or sometimes during the day. But if you see him before curtain or during intermission, that’s him too!”
“Who? Who, you old bat?” screeched Evelyn, now violently tugging away her wrist.
“The Scarsenguard Spirit,” Eugenia whispered, mustering all the raspy otherworldliness her vocal cords could provide.
Evelyn Rose felt the color drain from her face. Ah! Her kingdom for a mirror! In an almost unaffected stutter, she dared to whisper, “The S-S-Scarsenguard Spirit?”
“Years ago, a young boy died in this very theater. Some say a carelessly hung light crushed him. Others claim he fell into the orchestra pit and broke his leg, slowly bleeding out through a cold and lonely night. But me—I think he was murdered!”
An alley cat pawed at empty tuna cans Miss Butler had strategically placed by an open window. The sound they made as they crashed against the iron fire escape achieved the intended eerie effect.
“But who would murder a child?” Evelyn whispered in horror.
Miss Butler thought this a very good question, but seeing as how she had no answer, she plunged further into her tale. “At night he wanders the halls, but don’t be surprised if he appears whenever, seeking revenge, or sometimes a ball that he’s dropped.”
Right on cue, the boy appeared; perhaps he would have a career in the theatre after all. Eugenia had been working on his costume for days. She’d commandeered a few pieces from the Civil War epic Desire in Dixie, and a few more from the British farce Two Many Tuppence (a travesty that had sprung from the same pen as Father’s Farthing). With some creative stitching, Miss Butler had fashioned a convincing, if not entirely historically accurate, period costume for the boy. After slapping a cap on his head and covering him in flour, she had herself a ghost.
“August hungry,” the child piped in his winsome soprano.
“He died in August!” Miss Butler cried, grateful at this stroke of luck; today was the third of August. “And now the month that claimed his life is hungry for another soul!”
The appearance of the boy ghost was too much for young Evelyn Rose. She shrieked in pure sincerity and fled, unconcerned with what a mirror might show her for perhaps the first time in her life.
At the bar, Evelyn flung open the door, let out a piercing scream, and then fainted dead away, spectacularly late at last. An elderly doctor who happened to be having a drink made several unsuccessful attempts to revive her, but she could only be brought to by the youngest, most handsome man in the cast.
After she had downed several gin fizzes to calm her nerves, the company and crew gathered around Evelyn as she breathlessly recounted her experience with the afterlife.
“What was it called again?” asked a fellow castmate, impressed by the delicate flutter of fear in his own voice.
“The Scarsenguard Spirit,” Evelyn whispered, for what must have been the hundredth time. All in all, it was probably the best night of her life.
Meanwhile, the Scarsenguard Spirit was snuggled in his prop closet crib, being told a story about a terrible goblin by a clever laundress.
* * *
Eugenia’s plan worked better than she’d imagined; legend of the Scarsenguard Spirit spread far and wide. She heard all sorts of different stories being whispered in the Scarsenguard’s crooked hallways when other gossip was scarce. Whichever version people believed, Eugenia Butler didn’t mind. They all meant that August could roam freely about the theater, and no bothersome questions would arise.
Except that, while August enjoyed parading about in his Sons of the Confederacy/chimney sweep costume, he found it disheartening that anyone who caught sight of him ran away screaming.
An additional demoralizing facet of August’s life was the near constant hunger. Miss Butler provided square meals sporadically, and while the wranglers would often bring snacks, August learned early not to rely on outside sources for sustenance. He became an adept gatherer; chocolates sent to actresses by moony-eyed admirers became a key staple of August’s diet, and he had the good sense not to develop an allergy to almond, coconut, or nougat. Other dietary fixtures were the half-eaten sack lunches of stagehands, bits of cheeses left to mold next to the celebratory bottle of champagne, and rose petals.
The happiest few months of August’s young life were when The Importance of Being Earnest had a run at the Scarsenguard. During this enchanting time, August was able to gorge himself on all the muffins and cucumber sandwiches he could wish for, seeing as how they were integral to the play’s plot. This did cause a bit of trouble one matinee, however. Onstage, the actor playing Lane offered a tray that was meant to hold cucumber sandwiches to the actor playing Algernon, a bit of business that takes place within the first five lines of the play. Upon seeing the very empty tray, relieved of its contents by none other than August March, the actor playing Algernon accidentally cried out, “Good heavens! Lane! Why are there no cucumber sandwiches?” This was not a clever bit of improvisation, but an actual line of dialogue that was supposed to occur halfway through the act. Fearing they’d missed their entrances, the actors playing Ja
ck, Gwendolen, and Lady Bracknell stampeded onto the stage, and everyone had a horrible time covering all the exposition they’d inadvertently skipped. The audience left the play confused and crotchety, but then again, matinee audiences usually do. August was more careful with his pilfering after that.
Then there was the boy’s lack of education. Miss Butler tried her best, but found she could hardly remember her own age, let alone basic arithmetic. Some days she would sit down with August, intending to impart some nugget of wisdom, but then there were always so many socks to be darned, and stage blood to be bleached out, and where on earth did she set her pincushion?
Physical education was taken care of despite Miss Butler’s complete lack of interest in the subject. By hanging back in the wings or posing as a cast member, August was able to learn plenty of stage combat. He could tuck, roll, and wield a sword. Most children played tag; August played dead.
As for more bookish pursuits, August had many professors. Wilde, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Shaw, Chekhov—all left the lad with something. For example, he could recite King Richard II’s mirror speech before he could the alphabet, and he had, if not a firm grasp of the language, then at the very least a fine understanding of patronymic and diminutive Russian names: all this before the age of five.
Though he lacked companionship, education, and for the most part food, August was a happy child, contented with the bizarre life that Miss Butler had carved out for him. There was always such fun to be had in a theater, so much to see. He loved watching the stagehands, their muscular arms straining as they created wild tempests or moved whole cities with the pull of a rope. He loved climbing up the catwalk and spying on audience members. But most of all, August loved to watch the plays. He had his own spot, a small crawl space once used for storage but now long forgotten, situated directly over the center spotlight. It was a cramped little cubby, but August drew comfort from its confines; it was his private place within the very public Scarsenguard.
August had already been in his hole for hours. To access his crawl space, he had to climb the ladder that led to the center spotlight and then, using some rather ingenious footholds, shimmy his way up to the abandoned cubby. Obviously, he couldn’t do this in plain sight of the hundreds of theatergoers, Scarsenguard Spirit aside. So when August was in a mood to take in a play (which was nearly every night), he’d sneak into the theater hours before anyone was due to arrive and hunker down in what he considered to be the best seat in all the Scarsenguard.
The Astonishing Life of August March Page 1
