The Ladies of Garrison Gardens

by Louise Shaffer

  “Tassie,” Iva Claire said.

  Tassie looked up at her, and Iva Claire knew they were both thinking the same thing. “You said you know all our songs, didn't you?” Iva Claire asked.

  Tassie had gotten very pale, but she said, “I've been watching your act every day.”

  “Do you know the music well enough to sing it onstage?”

  “I couldn't learn all the fancy harmonies you do,” Tassie managed to get out. “Not in time for the show today. But I have a good ear, and I've always sung parts.”

  It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was better than Mama trying to fill twenty minutes as a solo. Iva Claire nodded at Mama. Finally realizing she was about to be rescued, Mama turned to Tassie. “Could you do it?” she demanded eagerly. “Could you do the act?”

  “Rehearse with her and see, Mama,” said Iva Claire. But she already knew what Mama was going to decide. For a second, it felt like something sharp had gotten inside her chest. Not because Tassie was going onstage in her place; Tassie was welcome to that torture. But Iva Claire's biggest pride, the one thing that made her different from every other kid she met was the fact that her mama needed her. And now, it seemed, Mama might not.

  Don't think about that.

  The pianist came in. Mama and Tassie began to sing. And somewhere in the whole mess of everything that was going on, the question of why Mama refused to let Iva Claire perform in Georgia got lost.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  IVA CLAIRE'S COSTUME was six inches too long for Tassie. And since the first show was at two-thirty, there was no time to shorten it. Nor was there time for her to learn all the gestures and moves Iva Claire did; watching an act from the wings was very different from performing it. On a more positive note, Tassie hadn't been lying when she said she had a good ear, and she'd actually picked up quite a lot of their harmonies as well as all the lyrics just by listening. What she didn't know she faked, so the music rehearsal had gone pretty well. All three of them agreed she could carry off the singing. As for the stage movements, she'd just have to try to do what Mama did.

  It was time to get ready for the first show. Mama and Tassie raced to the dressing room to slap on some greasepaint. Iva Claire followed them, trying not to think about all the things that could go wrong.

  Half an hour later, she stood with them backstage as they waited to go on. Tassie seemed all right, but Mama was panicking. The music started, and Mama went onstage like someone in a trance.

  Then without warning, Tassie froze. “I can't,” she whispered.

  “You've got to.”

  Tassie didn't move. Mama was already in position. Iva Claire gave Tassie a little shove—just enough to get her moving. Tassie made it out of the wings and on to the stage, but she'd forgotten to pull up her long skirt, so she stepped on it. Then she walked up it until she couldn't go any farther. Her big eyes now even bigger with fright, she smiled a fake smile at the audience and began tugging at her skirt—which didn't move because she was standing on it. There was a snicker from the house.

  Meanwhile, in the middle of the stage, Mama struck their opening pose with both hands clasped over her heart.

  Tassie's struggle had loosened the silk rose Iva Claire had pinned to her hair, and it started to slip down on her forehead. She blew frantically at it to keep it from falling, tugged at her skirt, and smiled idiotically at the audience. Then she blew at the rose again. And tugged at her skirt. And smiled. Now she had a routine going; blow, tug, smile, blow, tug, smile. Downstage center, Mama stood like a statue. The snicker from the house turned into giggles.

  Finally Tassie yanked her skirt free, hiked it up around her hips, scurried to her place at Mama's side, and clasped her hands over her heart. More giggles from the audience, and someone clapped. That was what did it. Iva Claire saw something flash in Tassie's eyes and knew she was going to play it for laughs. Her rose fell into her face again, and she blew at it explosively, but this time she looked straight out, so she was giving the audience the raspberry. She got a small hand. And she was on her way.

  When she and Mama started to sing, Tassie did all the gestures a beat after Mama did them. At one point, she stopped singing and walked around so she could see what Mama was doing and copy her. She kept up the battle with her rose and her skirt. What made all her bits even funnier was Mama, who went on singing and gesturing as if the mayhem at her side didn't exist. When they finished, the Sunshine Sisters got real applause, the kind where the audience is saying “Thank you!”

  Backstage, Iva Claire braced herself for an explosion. Mama was going to be furious. Tassie had turned her beautiful act into a joke for a bunch of hicks to laugh at, and Iva Claire knew it was going to be her fault. She waited for the onslaught.

  Mama came offstage first. She threw her arms around Iva Claire, her eyes glowing under the heavy makeup.

  “Listen, Claire de Lune,” she said, as the audience clapped. “Did you ever hear anything like that?”

  Tassie, whose eyes were glowing the same way, came off and hugged her too, whispering in her ear, “I hope you're not mad.”

  She wasn't, not really. She could never have done what Tassie had just done, and she never would have wanted to. But she did wish she had been the one who had put that light in her mama's eyes.

  For the next four shows, Tassie didn't get a single laugh. She repeated all the business she'd done before, but it fell flat. She tried harder and harder, tripping over her skirt so wildly that she almost fell into the orchestra pit, but she didn't get a peep from the house. The Sunshine Sisters were back to stinking again. Instead of the act being overrehearsed, it now looked like Amateur Night in Dixie—literally. After the last performance, Mama left the theater without saying a word. Iva Claire stayed with Tassie, who cried all the way back to the hotel.

  The next morning, just as Iva Claire and her mother finished getting dressed, there was a knock on the door. Benny and Irene came in with Tassie, wearing her costume with her rose pinned in her hair.

  “We gotta get this act in shape,” Benny said briskly, as Irene handed Mama a cup of coffee. “We can't have our girl laying an egg out there. Now, Miz Rain, you sing that opening number, and we're gonna work the shtick where Tassie trips on her skirt.”

  Iva Claire thought she knew what it meant to rehearse, but she'd never seen anything like the kind of drilling Benny did with Tassie that morning. Every accident that had been so funny the day before was now analyzed and broken down into minute movements, which were then repeated over and over. And throughout it all, Benny kept saying, “Remember how scared you was when this happened the first time? That's what made it funny. Don't never try to repeat that feeling—you can't. Once you get the moves locked in, you gotta find a fresh way to keep the feelings real for yourself. And they've gotta be real every night. That's what John Q Public wants: fresh and real.”

  When he was finally convinced that Tassie was ready, he gave them all one last bit of advice. “In comedy you gotta have a part of your head checking the audience. Not your whole head; think of it like you've gotta split your brain in two.”

  Mama and Tassie looked at him blankly.

  “Listen,” he said. “Serious actors, the ones who do all the high-hat plays, they gotta keep their mind on what's happening onstage. They gotta ignore the audience. But a comic's gotta be aware of the house so he can time his laughs and pace himself. You gotta do two things at once.” He paused. “Before I met Irene I had a mind-reading act—called myself the Great Otto. Talk about doing two things at once—you're saying your patter for the audience and all the time you're watching the mark like crazy, so you know when you're hitting home. Same thing you do when you're getting laughs. Being a mind reader is the best training for a comic I know of.”

  Tassie listened breathlessly. Iva Claire couldn't imagine putting that much time and thought into making people laugh.

  When it was time to go to the theater, Benny gave Tassie a kiss on the cheek and said, “You're as ready as you
'll ever be. Break a leg, sweetheart.”

  By the end of the day Tassie has gotten back most of her laughs. By the end of the week she and Benny had worked in several more. The Sunshine Sisters were almost as good as DeLoura and Ritz. And for the first time since she was five, Iva Claire was unemployed.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  MRS. RAIN

  2004

  MRS. RAIN? MRS. RAIN? I've been looking everywhere for you. What are you doing in the living room?” Cherry's voice, shrill with anxiety, sliced through her dreams and woke her.

  She opened her eyes and looked around. The child's question was an excellent one. She was indeed in her living room, in one of the most uncomfortable chairs she owned, and had obviously dozed off. What the hell she was doing there was a mystery. She forced her brain to address the issue.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Seven.”

  That wasn't much help. “Day or night?”

  “It's morning, Mrs. Rain.”

  She continued prodding her unwilling brain until it produced the memory of yet another sleepless night in which she had come downstairs to the living room. She leaned back, the mystery solved. Then she frowned and straightened up again. Her brain, now panting to be helpful, had just provided another memory. She had taken her picture out of the piano bench where she'd stashed it a couple of nights before, and she'd been looking at it when she'd drifted off. But now it wasn't in her hands, which meant—

  “What's this?” Cherry asked. The girl leaned down to pick up the picture, which had fallen with its envelope on the floor.

  “That's mine.” She held out her hand.

  The girl was staring at the publicity still. “Who is that?” she asked.

  “Just a picture.”

  “Is it you? The eyes are the same.”

  She could have lied. But she'd never been any good at that. “It was me. A long time ago.”

  “What's that weird thing you're wearing? Did people dress like that back then?”

  “That, my dear, was a costume.”

  “For Halloween?”

  Before Peggy Garrison died she might have let it go at that. But now there wasn't much point. Besides, she hadn't talked about the old days in so long. “It was a theater costume. I was in an act called the Sunshine Sisters.”

  “You had a sister? I've never heard you say anything about your family.”

  She looked down at the picture. “Yes,” she said. “I had the best sister anyone could ever ask for.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  IVA CLAIRE

  1927

  AT FIRST, IVA CLAIRE went to the theater, because she didn't know what else to do. She sat in the dressing room while her mother and Tassie put on their makeup and waited to see if Mama needed her. Mama often had headaches and had to have her back rubbed. When the Sunshine Sisters were onstage performing, Iva Claire stood where Mama could see her and know she was there. But Mama's headaches seemed to have vanished and she never looked to the wings for reassurance anymore. Finally, on the third day, Iva Claire stayed away from the theater as an experiment. Mama didn't seem to notice. The sharp object in Iva Claire's chest twisted a little, but the heady prospect of freedom balanced the twinge. Mama wasn't her responsibility anymore; Tassie was making her happy now. Long empty days with nothing to do—no performances, rehearsals, or making the rounds of the booking agents—suddenly stretched out ahead of Iva Claire.

  She read every book, magazine, and newspaper she could get her hands on. When she could find a radio, she listened to the news. She walked around the little town of Beltraine and looked at the civilians' houses with their gardens and trees and front yards. She began to dream again, about living in one place and going to school. There were so many new professions opening up for college girls in these modern times. Iva Claire already knew she wanted to be a social worker. Back in Hell's Kitchen there was a neighborhood settlement house run by a social worker named Miss Forsythe, and Iva Claire had admired her even more than Big Hannah. But you had to have a real education to be a social worker, and Iva Claire knew she'd never get one if she was always on the road.

  Meanwhile, as she was dreaming about her future, Mama and Tassie were knocking 'em dead at the New Court Theater five times a day. Mama was happier than Iva Claire had ever seen her, and Tassie was walking on air. But when the company left Georgia and moved on to Alabama, Iva Claire was supposed to go back into the act.

  After a whole week of freedom, Iva Claire didn't want to be a Sunshine Sister ever again. She knew Tassie was dreading having to leave the act as much she was dreading having to go back into it, but she'd thought of a way that they could both get what they wanted. There were schools—they were called boarding schools—where a kid who didn't have a regular home could live. She knew about them because she and Mama had once played the same circuit as Ethel Barrymore. When most vaudevillians went on tour, they just stuck the whole family into the act, whether they were talented or not. But Miss Barrymore was a classy legit actress, and her daughter went to boarding school. Iva Claire was going to try to convince Mama to let her go to one too. But she had to do it fast. They only had two more weeks in Georgia, and Mama wanted her to start rehearsing to take over from Tassie.

  “Benny can teach you what Tassie's been doing,” Mama said.

  “I'll never be able to do what Tassie does.”

  “Of course you can. All she does is stumble around and fall down.”

  “Mama, Tassie's wonderful. She changed the whole act.”

  “That was an accident.” After all the hours of rehearsing with Benny, Mama still didn't see how hard it was to do Tassie's shtick. “Besides,” Mama added, “the audience laughs because I'm standing in front of her singing. We'll be just as funny when you're doing Tassie's part.”

  Mama was taking credit for the laughs Tassie was getting. Well, of course she was, Iva Claire thought. I should have known.

  “I'm not a comic like Tassie. You know that.”

  “You can do it, Claire de Lune!” Mama smiled happily. “I know you can. Start working with Benny tomorrow morning, and by the time we get to Alabama you'll be perfect.”

  “Mama, you're a hit now. Why do you want to change things?”

  “This is our act!” Mama was pleading now. “We're the Sunshine Sisters, Claire de Lune, you and me.”

  “But I'll ruin everything.”

  “You have to come back! It's supposed to be you and me together! That's the dream, Claire de Lune. You and me!”

  And that was why Mama couldn't see that Tassie was the real star of the act, because it didn't fit her dream. She'd never see that her Claire de Lune didn't want to be in show business, because that didn't fit her dream either. So they'd drop poor little Tassie and break her heart, and Iva Claire and Mama would be back where they'd always been, broke, with a stinker act and no bookings, waiting for the checks that came twice a year.

  It was such a waste. All three of them could have had exactly what they wanted, but Mama was going to throw it all away. Suddenly Iva Claire knew she couldn't go along with it. Somehow she was going to go to school. She'd make the plans behind Mama's back and tell her about it after it was all settled. Mama could cry and yell, but there wouldn't be any way she could stop Iva Claire once the school was paid for. And if the act was a really big success, eventually Mama would get over feeling bad. She hoped.

  Obviously there were big hurdles to be overcome, the first and most important being money. Going to a boarding school had to be expensive. But Iva Claire thought she knew where she could get help. She was going to get in touch with the mysterious benefactor who sent their checks.

  She knew the person's address; she'd seen it dozens of times on the back flaps of the long white envelopes: a street, a street number, a town, and the state of Georgia. The sender's name was never included, but Iva Claire had always assumed that it must be a member of Mama's family. Over the years she'd pictured a grandmother who looked like Miss Barrymore
and a grandfather who was a taller version of Pete Massoni. Or maybe it was an aunt or uncle who had been supporting her all these years. Whoever it was, if she could contact them, she thought maybe she could persuade them to help her. They had been generous in the past. And there was the possibility that they might even like her. She decided it would be best if she could meet her unknown relative—or relatives—face-to-face.

  At the railroad station she learned that Beltraine was an hour south of Atlanta and the address from the checks was an hour north of the city. She could go and come back in the same day. The fact that she would have to steal money from Mama's purse for the ticket made her feel guilty, but it was for a good cause.

  She didn't want to show up unannounced on her family's doorstep, they might not like that. So, even though it would take time she didn't have, she wrote a letter. Finding the right words when she wasn't sure who she was writing to was hard. She couldn't figure out how to begin. Dear Person Who Has Been Sending Checks to Mama and Me clearly wasn't right. Finally she wrote a brief note in which she told them who she was, said that she was in Georgia, and offered to come to their house to meet them if they would tell her how to get there. She told them she was staying in Beltraine and asked them to contact her at General Delivery. She thought about giving them the name of her hotel but decided it was too risky; the desk clerk might give her mail to Mama.

  Two days after she sent the letter, she went to the General Delivery office to see if there was an answer, even though she knew it would take at least a week. She and Mama had never been churchgoers, but she was praying for a reply before they left for Alabama.

  Meanwhile, because Mama insisted, she began sitting in the wings and marking Tassie's moves in the act—and trying not to see the pained look on Tassie's face. She wanted to tell Tassie how she was going to save them all, but she was afraid Tassie might say something to Mama by mistake.