Chapter Twenty-Four #5
Emotional applause exploded. Mazelle had missed the speeches, but not the lesson. Before she knew it, she was sitting on the piano bench. Slipping her foot to the pedal. One by one, she slid off her elegant gloves and laid them on the bench beside her.
The same blue-haired mink lady noticed her, and she tapped the shoulder of the elderly man standing next to her, who looked similarly disturbed. If those codgers wanted to move her from the piano bench, they could just come over and try it.
Mazelle had never seen sheet music for “As Time Goes By,” so she tested the opening chords to feel her way through the progression. She whisper-sang to see if it was a comfortable key. “You must… remember this…”
Not bad, but she didn’t want to struggle on the higher notes, so she shifted chords. The crowd was still excited from the speeches; only mink lady and her escort paid her any mind. She filtered out the noise the way she did when she was waiting on the set.
She imagined herself sitting at Sam’s piano in Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart standing over her shoulder, pining for his true love.
Mazelle wished that Richard were her true love to pine for.
She wished she had never felt Lorenzo’s touch.
That was how she could “find” the song, as Dottie advised her.
Where were her emotions? What was she mourning?
She chose the key of D and improvised a longer opening, elegant flourishes to match the evening’s finery.
Mazelle sang. She began with a bland delivery, gathering her nerve, but when she sang about how a smile was just a smile, her voice climbed higher with a coarse bluesiness that silenced the voices closest to her.
She sang with longing for a proper lover’s wooing—not Richard’s rough hands or Lorenzo’s unwelcome ones.
While she sang about what the future might bring, her voice quavered with her wish to undo time.
“Play it again!” someone shouted from the back, and the crowd laughed and clapped.
Mazelle did, embellishing on her introduction with an arpeggio, artfully crossing her arms to imitate a classical pianist. Thank you, Aunt Ruby.
When she began the melody again, the crowd joined her singing with intoxicated, patriotic exuberance.
Mazelle hadn’t imagined a sing-along, but what could be better?
For those few moments, their voices blended into a wall of joyful song.
Nothing separated them; not skin color, not fame, not wealth.
Mazelle never wanted the moment to end.
But it did, and abruptly enough that for the rest of her life she would try to fathom how she went from soaring at such a great height to being brought so low.
When she stood from the piano bench, she was showered with applause.
Mink lady had lost her frown. The biggest names in town—names she knew and many she didn’t—encircled her with kinship and goodwill.
Lena Horne and her dark-haired friend (Ava Gardner, she would learn later) blew kisses.
Clark Gable and his military cohort of half a dozen men looked pleased.
Mazelle had forgotten about Lorenzo until his slurred voice chopped through her fog of pleasure.
“I told ya, didn’t I?” he said. “She’s a smash! ”
Lorenzo tugged on Mazelle’s arm, guiding her away from the crowd to a mustached fortyish man wearing less formal clothing, in a regular jacket suit and tie. He had playful eyes.
“Here she is,” Lorenzo said, his cheeks shining red from booze.
“Didn’t I tell you? Mazelle, this fella’s name is Walt Disney.
You saw Snow White, didn’t you? He does those cartoon pictures.
He just told me he’s got the rights to the Uncle Remus stories.
Can you believe it? He’s gonna do a big, all-star Negro picture! ”
Mazelle tried to keep her smile from wilting, but Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus stories about Br’er Rabbit and Br’er Fox couldn’t possibly offer her a promising role. It wasn’t a step forward for sure. And if it was just a cartoon, no one would see her face.
Still, Mazelle said, “So good to meet you, Mr. Disney—”
Lorenzo patted Mazelle’s shoulder too hard, careless in his drunken enthusiasm. “Go on, do it for him. Show him you can do the voice.”
Mazelle looked at Lorenzo, confused.
“Do Lazy Mazy!” Lorenzo blurted. “Come on—show him!”
To her, Lorenzo’s voice tolled throughout the room and trembled the walls.
The Frenchman’s careless words had unmasked her, but Lorenzo made her feel stripped naked.
She couldn’t bear to glance around to see if anyone else had heard—Lena Horne or Jack Warner or Bette Davis or Clark Gable.
To her, everyone had heard, even in the hallway outside.
The whole world heard him utter that loathsome name.
Lorenzo brayed whiskey-drowned laughter into her face and pinched her cheek. She tugged her face away. “Come on, kiddo…” Lorenzo said. “Don’t look at me like that. You’ll always be Lazy Mazy.”
Mazelle wished she could wrap her hands around Lorenzo’s neck and snap his spine. Instead, just like in a fairy tale, she turned to flee the ball.