Chapter Thirty-Five
Miranda is my kind of gal. Not only does she survive, making it to dry land after her abandonment at sea, but she’s clever enough to come out on top, even with the horrid men all around her trying to tell her what to do.
I pour all my focus that autumn into Miranda because, like hers, my life has been a stormy journey with men who have let me down, each in his own way.
And perhaps this pain hurts worst of all.
If viewed in the most favorable light, Arthur Darrow was simply too weak and feckless to stand up for us, the promises we’d made and the life we’d envisioned together. He gave in to whatever threats and enticements Stan lobbed at him—and I don’t doubt that there were many.
If viewed in a less forgiving light, Arthur Darrow lied to me, seduced me, and then abandoned me.
But no, I cannot allow myself to believe that.
What we had that summer—that was real. It was real for me.
I have to believe it was real for him, too.
Because if it wasn’t, it’s both too shattering and too frightening to think just how foolish I was.
“Sweet lord, you play me false.” I memorize my lines before the mirror in my bedroom, swearing I’ll never be a fool again.
I throw myself into my work, allowing my heart to scab and then harden.
With Art gone, I have no choice but to move back in with Mamma at the Audubon.
Stan doesn’t mention anything about cutting off his support—our hotel bills, our food, even the allowance I know he gives Mamma for our wardrobes and other expenses.
When he does come to visit Mamma, I maintain a cold and distant cordiality.
My wages from The Tempest are a pittance compared to our monthly bills.
As much as I loathe him, we do depend on Stan.
But I’ll never again touch him. Nor will I get into the back of his auto.
Or visit his brownstone. Or the tower. For now, while I’m busy with rehearsals and out of the suite as much as I can be, this flimsy and odious truce appears to hold.
When the curtains go up and I begin my run as Miranda, all the papers give me begrudging praise. The showgirl who has turned to Shakespeare. I relish the opportunity to win over the audience each night—to show them there’s so much more to me than just my pretty face and high-kicking legs.
The Tempest plays through its limited run. For my next role, I decide I want something a bit more energetic, to get back into singing in a company with other young gals. Penny is auditioning for a part in the chorus of a new show, so she tips me off. I decide I’ll try for the lead.
While the show may seem a bit frivolous after Shakespeare, I am desperate for the part—it would be the first role in years that Stan had no part in getting for me. I decide to get it for myself.
The play is called Sweet Cherri Pie, a musical, far from Shakespeare’s caliber, but it’s bound to be a packed house each night, and the pay would be steady.
The high point of the show comes when the leading lady, Cherri, pops out of a pie with live birds flying all around her, just before the curtain falls for intermission.
Variety will keep me entertained, and the work will keep me from getting pulled under by grief.
The audience falls in love with me all over again as Cherri.
With Penny in the chorus, work feels enjoyable, and my melancholy loosens its hold.
I no longer crave nights on the town, dancing and reveling like a young chorus girl, but Penny and I do step out occasionally, and her friendship provides a light with which to fend off the loneliness.
Now that I’m the lead, the attention becomes even more glaring than what I experienced as the Spanish Maiden or Lakshmi.
I receive letters every day, piles of mail.
But even more than that—invitations and offers.
Offers of jewelry and other gifts, invitations to dinner, to dances, to marriage.
I know how this goes and take little notice of the mail that keeps coming to the theater and the hotel. I don’t need any more empty promises.
There is, however, one delivery that catches me off guard.
It’s a bouquet of blood-red roses. My first thought is that it must be from Stan, but then the concierge offers me the envelope that accompanies the delivery.
I study the unfamiliar handwriting a moment before I notice that the flower stems are wrapped in a fifty-dollar bill.
I peel the money off and stare at the curled, soggy bill, and then I decide to write to whomever the sender is to tell him I cannot accept.
But when I look down at the envelope and see the name, my blood stills in my veins.
Thorne.
Mr. Hal Thorne.
I know that name. Is this Mr. Thorne related to the Pittsburgh family, with their railroad millions and mansion on Beechwood Boulevard?
That sour matron who turned us away on that frigid Christmas Day, all those years ago?
I decide not to write but instead slip the fifty to one of the maids who cleans my suite each morning.
The next day, the same delivery arrives at my suite—blood-red roses wrapped in money. This time I ask the hotel errand boy to return the money with a terse message saying that Miss Talbot is thankful for the generous gift, but she cannot accept. I hope that will put an end to the matter.
It does not. The next day, the same red flowers from Mr. Thorne, without the money this time. By the end of the week, my suite looks like a rose garden, all the flowers the same shade of deep red.
On the seventh day, the roses arrive with a handwritten note from Mr. Thorne, asking if we can meet.
“You know anything about a Hal Thorne?” I ask Penny on a Monday night that winter.
It’s our one night off, and I always look for reasons to be away from the suite in case Stan calls.
I usually drag Penny with me on my outings.
Tonight we have bundled up in furs and walked for over an hour, so far south that we are now nearly to the bottom tip of the island.
“Hal Thorne?” Penny has her arm woven through mine, and I throw her a sideways glance. “Why, of course I do. He’s all over the papers. He’s one of Comstock’s big supporters.”
Now, that name I also know. Mr. Comstock, the self-appointed vigilante of virtue in New York. Mr. Comstock is the gent who is always getting people in trouble if they do something he considers a sin. He was an ever-present thorn in Stan’s side, always coming after him.
“I heard Hal Thorne is richer than royalty,” Penny says.
“Is he from Pittsburgh?”
“I don’t know that one,” Penny answers. “But I can find out. Say, would you look at her?” Penny has paused her steps at my side.
We have made our way to Bowling Green, with its sweeping view over the water and Lady Liberty rising up from her island perch beyond that.
She’s illuminated against the crisp, clear winter night, proud and steadfast.
“Ev, do you think it’s all bunk?”
I turn to Penny, unsure of her meaning. “What?”
“Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness…” Penny is still staring at Lady Liberty with a thoughtful expression. “Does a fatherless romantic like you or a scrappy orphan like me stand a chance? Or do those dreams of freedom and happiness only apply to the men?”
“Ah,” I say, grasping her meaning. “Certainly not.” My voice is low, but tinged with defiance. “I think we have just as much a right to it as anyone else,” I declare, and I know I’m saying it not only for my friend to hear, but for myself. “Pen, let’s make a promise.”
“What kind of promise?”
I face Penny, dropping her arm but grabbing her hand and raising it up so that our grip is clasped between our two hearts. “We are going to live free, just like that lady in the harbor. Deal?”
“Evie, my friend”—Penny leans her face toward mine, catching the reflected lights of lower Manhattan in her gaze—“you got yourself a deal.”
—
The next day, Penny bursts into my dressing room half an hour before our curtain call. “Mr. Thorne is from Pittsburgh. Steel and railroads. Like I said, rich as a king.”
I swivel around in my chair, my rouge brush grasped in my fingers. “Well, then, he’s part of that family.”
Penny leans over my shoulder and takes a quick glance at herself in my vanity mirror. “Which family?”
“The Thornes in Pittsburgh. You could say that his family started…well, everything for me.”
Penny throws me a confused look. “What do you mean? You and the Thornes were friendly down there?”
“Hardly.” I sputter out a laugh. “The Thornes were why we left Pittsburgh,” I clarify, my mind traveling back to that cold Christmas night. The Thorne mansion appearing bright and warm, huddled back from the quiet boulevard, a forbidden domain. “That must have been his mother, Mrs. Thorne.”
“Ev, I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”
“It was her snobbery, and her five-dollar bill, that started our whole trip.”
“Trip to where?”
I meet my friend’s eyes as I say, “We went to Philadelphia first. And then came here, to Manhattan.”
“Ah,” Penny says, crossing her arms. “Well, he must have wanted to leave Mother Dearest as well, because he’s set up here in Manhattan now. He’s a fixture in the society pages. Oh, but get this: your sweetheart Mr. Thorne—”
“He’s not my sweetheart! He’s sent me some roses.”
“Fine, fine. Your admirer, then…He’s been denied entry to every gentleman’s club in town—the Union League, the Metropolitan Club, which of course, your Mr. Pierce will let us all know he built.”
“Where did you find all this out?” I ask, studying my friend with appreciation and a fair bit of awe.
Penny’s face drops. “I got the scoop from Dinah and Dolly. They know everything, as you are well aware.”
I nod, my stomach taking a slight dip at the mention of their names. They still don’t speak to me much, when I bump into them around town. Then a question pops into my mind. “Did you tell Dinah and Dolly that you were scoping out details for me?”
“I didn’t. But I’m sure they guessed.”
“How would they have guessed?”
“Because they know you’re my best girl,” Penny says, giving my rouged cheek a playful pinch. “And who else has a face pretty enough to have royalty banging down her door?”
I roll my eyes and look back into my mirror. But my friend chatters on: “Come on, Evelyn. They ain’t cross with you. We girls gotta stick together, right?”
Penny’s words give my spirits a small lift. Perhaps, in time, we can all be pals again. I’d like that very much. Stanley Pierce isn’t worth losing a single friend over, let alone two.
“Dolly and Dinah had some other good gossip, as they always do,” Penny continues, as she hops up onto my vanity and crosses her stockinged legs.
“Seems for as virtuous as this Mr. Thorne may be, helping Comstock to fight against sin and whatnot, he’s been known to display some bad behavior of his own.
He once crashed his auto into a shopfront because they didn’t have the gloves he wanted. ”
I cock my head to the side. “Come now, that sounds made up. You can’t trust the newspapers as far as you can throw them.”
“Maybe so.” Penny shrugs. “Or that may be part of the reason why Mr. Thorne has been banned from the gentleman’s clubs. That, and the fact that he and Stanley Pierce despise each other.”
This is the most interesting morsel of gossip she’s shared yet. “They do?”
“Think about it.” Penny hops down from my vanity, gives herself a final once-over in my mirror, then holds my eyes in its reflection. “Thorne funds Comstock. Who does Comstock take aim against most often? Your friend Mr. Pierce.”
“Mr. Pierce is not my friend,” I respond, my tone brittle.
“He ain’t Mr. Thorne’s friend, either, from the sound of it.”
In fact it sounds like Hal Thorne and Stanley Pierce loathe each other. Which is very interesting indeed. “Penny,” I say, taking my friend’s hand and giving it a squeeze, “I think I’ll accept Mr. Thorne’s invitation to meet.”
“I think that’s a bully idea.” Penny nods. “What harm could there be in one little meeting?”