Chapter Thirteen
“I want to be more than a calendar girl,” I declare to Mamma that evening as we sit down to supper.
It’s a simple meal, pork chops with potatoes, but it’s more than we could have had even a few months ago, and with the window open to let in the gentle breeze of a mild evening, it feels almost pleasant in our room.
When Mamma offers no reply, I press on. “The long sittings, not being able to move…” Several years into this work as an artists’ model, it’s starting to take its toll, the fact that I’m not able to show any sign of life, when I feel as though I’m bursting with it.
I want more. I crave some of the electric excitement of the city all around me. And I finally know the way to get it.
Lately, anytime I’ve been walking home from a sitting, I’ve taken the route that brings me down Broadway. There’s some magnet pulling me in that direction, toward that bustling playground of song and dance, the Great White Way.
Why, that would be life, indeed. Those worlds of color and light. As I walk, I look at those theaters, and I think: I want to go inside. I want to do the work of the theater, where not only would I be allowed to move—I’d be dancing and singing!
Violet first put the idea in my head months ago, but the letter I opened in secret this morning took it from an idea to a most insistent desire. Revealing, quite possibly, a path.
The letter was from a Mr. Theo Martin, a stage agent who explained that he is currently working with the company of Fair Flora and Fauna, a new show set to open later this year.
He wrote in his letter about the chorus girls, the dance numbers, the tropical stage sets.
As I read Mr. Martin’s words, I was able to see it all in my mind—and now I want it.
“Mamma, think about it. I could still work during the days with the artists. My work in the theater would be in the evening. Imagine how much more I could bring in.”
But Mamma doesn’t appear willing to consider my idea.
“Beckwith and Church already warned me this might happen. That the stage agents would come knocking. And they don’t approve.
It would be ill-advised,” Mamma says, no doubt parroting the men who have made a lot of money off of my hard work.
And then she adds, with a note of finality, “You are still a child, Florence.”
I bristle at this, at her sudden concern for my innocence. “I’m earning like a man,” I reply.
“Then why not keep earning? Mr. Beckwith and Mr. Church—”
“They want to keep me working with them, of course. And I will. But I think I can do more than simply sitting.”
“We have a good thing going.” Mamma’s voice is unyielding.
But as I look around our small room, I respond, “We could have even more, Mamma. A double income. We could put even more distance between ourselves and the privations we’ve known in the past.”
Mamma frowns at this, and I’m not certain whether it’s because she is seriously considering my proposition or because she’s recalling the privations of our past. Her face looks tired, so I press on, “Please, Mamma. One meeting with an agent? Just to hear his proposal. You’d come with me, of course. ”
—
In the end, it’s only with the promise that I’ll keep working as an artists’ model, and we will only consider a job on the stage with a reputable agent in a good company, that Mamma agrees to one meeting.
“It’s expected to be the biggest ticket on Broadway; it’ll be a sensation, a packed house every night,” I say, my voice a bit breathy from both the brisk pace of our walk up the crowded street and my excitement for the day’s meeting.
I’ve brought Mamma with me to the Casino Theatre, where Mr. Martin’s new show will soon go on, set on a fabled island in the Pacific.
Now that the building of the Panama Canal is all over the newspapers, such a setting and topic have captured everyone’s imagination—written about with almost as much excitement and frequency as anything having to do with me.
Mr. Martin greets us at the theater door on Thirty-ninth and Broadway.
He’s dressed in a natty style, so unlike the artists I’m used to working with, turned out in a crisp checkered suit and crimson necktie.
He ushers us inside with the air of a man who has got more things to accomplish than he has hours in the day.
Mamma and I follow Mr. Martin through the lobby, our heels clicking across the marble floor, and then down a hallway, where he guides us toward the third door.
He closes us in together, and I take a look at the small rectangular space.
Mr. Martin’s office is a mess. His desk is strewn with papers—playbills, newspapers, letters both opened and unopened.
Mr. Martin takes his seat behind his desk and gestures for us to do the same in the two wooden chairs across from him.
I hear the muffled sounds of a piano plunking somewhere above us.
Without any ceremony, he jerks his chin toward his pile of correspondence and grins.
“A few other gals want a place in the footlights.”
Mamma and I exchange a glance, then he carries on.
“They want to reel in a millionaire, mostly. To which I always say: you marry for the money; you end up working to earn every cent.” He exhales a puff of self-important laughter, then offers a wave of his hand.
“But when I saw your pictures, I thought, Now, there’s a girl who should be on the stage.
Only, now that I’m seeing you up close, Mrs…
. er, Talbot, I’d say, well, it’s not what I was expecting.
From your pictures, that is. You’re a bit… beyond…the typical age we look for.”
I throw a look toward Mamma. From the tightening of her features, I see she’s as stunned as I am—by Mr. Martin’s demeanor, his snappy style, his brash commentary—but most of all by his last comment. “Mr. Martin,” she replies, “I believe there may be a misunderstanding.”
The stageman hitches an eyebrow. “That so?”
Mamma leans forward in her seat and says: “It’s my daughter here, Miss Florence Talbot.” She gestures toward me. “My daughter has an interest in the stage. I am her manager.”
Mr. Martin slides his gaze toward me. “You?” He quickly scans my appearance, my emerald-colored skirt suit that I selected for this meeting with such care because I thought it not only hugged my figure in a flattering cut but also made me look sophisticated.
He takes in the matching emerald cap nestled atop my upswept hair, the hint of red on my lips, my cheeks.
Then Mr. Martin flashes a grin, one I find hard to read.
“You’re the girl in the Coca-Cola calendar?” His eyes dart back and forth from me to Mamma, a look of understanding breaking across his features. With a chuckle, he leans toward Mamma like he’s about to share a secret. “I assumed she was your kid along for your meeting. How old is she?”
Mamma rearranges herself in her seat. “Florence is nineteen.”
“Sure, and I’m the cow that jumped over the moon, lady.” The flash of Mr. Martin’s toothy grin hits me like a taunt, so I pull his letter from my pocket and slide it across his messy desk.
Mr. Martin peers down at his own handwriting, frowning, before looking back to me. “You are the Gibson Girl? You are Woman, the Eternal Question?”
I nod.
“But you can’t be a day over…” He tugs on his red tie, a quick shake of his head as he says, “Sorry, but I’m not in the business of plucking babies from cradles.”
And just like that, with a wave of his hands, this interview is over. Before I’ve even had a chance to open my mouth, let alone audition.
Before I know what I’m doing, I begin to cry. Hot tears. Tears of frustration. At the unfairness of it all, at how the world will use me as a woman in one instant and call me a baby the next.
“Now, now.” Mr. Martin shifts in his seat, glancing from me to Mamma. “There’s no need for all of that.”
“But…you wrote to me,” I say, picking up the letter that I’d placed between us, waving it like a flag before him. It’s the first thing I’ve said to Mr. Martin since Mamma introduced us, and this behavior, coupled with my tears, can’t be helping with his assumption that I’m a mere child.
Mr. Martin looks highly uncomfortable as he taps his pencil on his desk, eyebrows angling toward each other. “How old did you say you are again?”
“She’s nineteen,” Mamma declares, her tone flat.
“Nineteen? Why, do you take me for a—no, on second thought, you know what? Don’t tell me.
I don’t want to know.” Mr. Martin shakes his head, blinking rapidly.
After what feels like an interminable silence, he ceases his pencil tapping and fixes me with a pointed look.
“Listen here, kid. There’s a rehearsal wrapping up right now.
Let’s just go up and have a look, shall we? ”
Mamma and I follow Mr. Martin up the carpeted stairs in a brisk and wordless line, coming to the second story and a wide doorway that leads into a large studio.
The tinny plunking of the piano has ceased, and rehearsal seems to be over: girls in leotards and dance shoes stream off the elevated stage to the left and right, scattering in two shoals of chitchat and chirpy laughter.
I stand, motionless, and watch them in silent envy.
Many of them appear fresh-faced and petite—are they really that much older than me?
There’s a man rising from the piano in the front corner of the room, and Mr. Martin leads me and Mamma toward him. “Miss Talbot, I’d like you to meet Mr. Scharf. He’s our musical director here at Flora.”
I do a small curtsy for this Mr. Scharf, who is looking from me to Mr. Martin with a bemused expression.
“How was rehearsal?” Mr. Martin asks. “Is the second line coming together?”
“Every day we get a bit tighter,” the man answers, gazing toward the doorway as though he’d like to leave.
Mr. Martin crosses his arms. “You got time to stick around for one more number? Miss Talbot here would like to show us her stuff.”