Chapter Fifteen #2
The lauds also come in print reviews. Since we have access to all the newspapers in the dressing room at the theater, Mamma no longer tries to stop my reading them.
In addition to reporting in the society pages on what I wear, where I dine, and even how I style my hair, they also say that I’m a natural onstage.
One well-regarded reporter, the Evening Journal’s Dorothy Dix, says my “beauty is as vague and intangible as that of the lily, or any other frail and delicate thing. It lies over her face like a veil.” Penny clips that article in particular and pins it over the mirror where I sit to fix myself up for the evening.
I am seated at that station when Dolly approaches me the following night.
I’m surrounded by flowers, the bouquets gentlemen send after every performance, filling the space with their color and perfume.
Dolly takes it all in—the bouquets, the cards and notes, the press clippings—then meets my eyes in the mirror’s reflection. “Your ma and pa must be so proud.”
I’m rouging my cheeks, so I keep looking into the mirror as I answer: “Daddy is dead. Mamma—well, it’s complicated.”
Penny, at my side, overhears this and sighs. “Isn’t it always?”
Dolly nods, her fingers stroking a fragrant lily at my side. “If it weren’t complicated, we probably wouldn’t be back here…or up on the stage.”
“We’d be in school,” says Penny, and I hear the longing in her words. I know the longing because it’s the same thing I’ve felt on so many occasions. Though I’ve never admitted my actual age to the girls, I suspect quite a few of us are teenagers, much younger than the “nineteen” we always answer.
I lower my makeup brush and square my shoulders, staring straight into the mirror.
I know better than to succumb to melancholy, or even self-pity; and to be honest, this current life isn’t so bad, what with the flowers and the champagne, the nights out with friends.
“My school has been this,” I say, trying to sound airy. And more savvy than I truly feel.
“That’s right,” Dolly says after a beat, nodding her ringleted head. “We’ve learned the ropes well enough, haven’t we?”
“It was either that or hang.” Penny rises from her seat and makes her way over to the massive wardrobe area across the room, where she starts riffling through flounces and feathers to find her costume.
But Dolly lingers beside my chair, still staring at me in the mirror’s reflection. “Say, Ev, would you like to hear something kind of neat?”
“Sure.”
Dolly turns back to the flowers, grazing her fingers over the petals. “I know someone in a position of…well, someone who’d like to meet you. And I think you might like to meet him, too.”
I wheel around in my seat to face her directly. “What do you mean?”
“He’s, well, a friend of mine.”
“And why does he want to meet me?”
Instead of answering, Dolly waves her mamma, or sister, over. Dinah approaches, taking in my crowded space—the bower of plants, the cards—then her eyes rest on the newspaper article that’s pinned up, filled with the praises of Dorothy Dix.
“Dolly says she’d like me to meet someone,” I say.
Dinah puts a hand on my shoulder. When she speaks, her voice is like that of a doting mother. “Sweetie, we got someone who wants to meet you.”
I sit up a bit straighter. Dinah goes on, patting a hand to her cherry-red coif as she studies her reflection in the mirror. “Let’s just say he’s a big supporter of the show. And he’s been asking me to arrange an introduction with the little Spanish Maiden.”
I glance around the colorful space, the room buzzing with nubile young bodies in various states of undress.
Chatter, props, and costumes fill the scene, which thrums with all the usual preshow electricity.
Then I turn back to my friends at my side.
“You all are always telling me not to have anything to do with the Stage-Door Johnnies or other admirers who come calling.”
Dinah laughs at this, putting a hand on her hip as she throws a look toward Dolly. Then, turning back to me with a smirk, she says, “Kid, this ain’t no Stage-Door Johnny.”
“No sirree, Bob,” agrees Dolly, a touch of reverence in her tone.
Dinah leans toward me, looks me straight in the eyes. “They call him the Pharaoh of Fifth Avenue. He’s a high society type. You know, a real fat cat.”
I look at each of them in turn, but I say nothing. Dinah continues: “Not to mention, he’s one of the biggest investors in our production. It’d be nice to make friends with him. Just a little group for lunch; that’s all he’s asking for.”
I don’t dine with men I’ve never met, so I answer: “Mamma would say no.”
Dinah flashes me a wink, undaunted. Then, raising her hand, she gives my cheek one gentle stroke before taking my chin in the cradle of her fingers. Tipping my face up toward hers, she sighs. “Ev, your mamma might say no to you. But she won’t say no to him.”
Now it’s my turn to chuckle. “What makes you so sure?” I ask.
“Because,” answers Dinah, a mischievous smirk tugging on her flame-red lips, “no one says no to Stanley Pierce.”