China Dolls (45 page)

That night, new women were brought in, some of whom claimed, like us, to be completely innocent. “I’m here to visit my son before he ships out.” “My fiancé will go mad when he hears what you’ve done to me.” We also heard, “I got separated from my brother” several times, too many times perhaps, so it came as no surprise on the morning of our fourth day that the sixteen-year-old girl we’d met on our first night was pronounced infected and sent away for the duration. We, fortunately, were released.

“Make sure you keep clean down there,” the sergeant at the front desk cautioned as we pushed out the door, “and don’t come back to Norfolk.”

We went to the hotel and took long baths to clean the grime, germs, and the memory of the doctor’s hands off us. I hugged Tommy and promised never to let him go. He buried his face in my neck and cried. Ruby wept in her room, beginning, finally, to deal with her brother’s death. Grace jammed her
V
for
victory
skirt into the trash bin under the desk. I considered myself to be the tour manager, but Grace picked up the phone and called Sam Bernstein to cancel the rest of our bookings.

“I don’t give a damn about penalties,” she said into the receiver. “I’ve got money. I’ll pay the penalties.” She listened to Sam, nodding. She glanced in my direction so she could communicate to both of us at the same time. “You’re telling me Charlie still says the weather isn’t good?” she asked, which meant that the show kids hadn’t forgiven her yet and didn’t want her around. She sighed. “Doesn’t matter anyway. We can’t take Ruby to California.” Then, without asking me, she announced, “We’re going to Miami to rest for a couple of weeks and get Ruby back on her feet. Then you’re going to find a gig for just Ruby and me.”

Later that day, we said goodbye to Ming and Ling. Then we saw Irene, Jack, and the kids off at the station. An hour later, we boarded a train to take us south. In Miami, we found a nice hotel right on the
shore, checked in to a two-bedroom suite with a shared living room, ordered room service, and vowed to keep life as simple as possible for a while. After lunch, we walked to the beach, sat under an umbrella, stared at the ocean, and let Ruby grieve. We watched Tommy dig in the sand. We let the sound of the waves wash over us. The warmth helped us to heal. The soughing of the palm trees soothed like a mother
—shh, shh, shh
. A few days later, Germany surrendered. Now all that remained was to finish off the Japs, but how long would that take? I pushed that out of my mind and concentrated on planning our future.

B
AD LUCK MAY
have brought us to Miami, but all we found there was good luck. After a month of rest, Sam booked Ruby and Grace into Winnie’s Riptide. On opening night, a well-heeled rubber king with vast holdings in Singapore sat in the audience. Ruby performed with her fans, expertly manipulating them until she threw caution—and her feathers—to the wind and stood there, quite unashamed, dressed only in her blue spotlight and that single tiny piece of silk. After that, Ruby and Grace took turns topping the bill each night. The next thing we knew, the rubber king hosted a party for us. The Club Bali—“with South Seas charm and toe-teasing tunes played by two orchestras”—hired Ruby and Grace away from the Riptide. Sam got them substantial raises, and Ruby increased my salary. Six weeks later, they got a gig at the Colonial Inn.

The rubber king bought Ruby a white ermine fur worth thousands of dollars, which she wore for grand entrances. He gave her diamonds—and rubies, of course. He had his chauffeur polish one of his cars—a prewar Cadillac convertible, mint green with white-wall tires—and presented it to Ruby to drive for as long as she liked. Tommy spent his days playing on the beach. Things were going so well that we decided to take the summer off and stay with the rubber king in his mansion in Coral Gables through Florida’s quiet months. I was relieved to see Ruby so happy. Was she “in love”? Hard to say, but she was back to her old self—giggly, chatty, flirtatious, always
with a pair of freshly cut gardenias tucked above her left ear. We lazed, danced at parties, shopped, and drank icy daiquiris.

Then, at the end of the first week of August, the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We studied the photographs of the mushroom clouds with a mixture of awe and horror. I thought the Japs deserved what they got, but I didn’t say that to Ruby. Japan surrendered a week later, on August 14. In Miami, people flooded the streets and carried on all night—making love, breaking windows, and overturning cars and trash cans. Church bells rang. Strangers hugged each other. Confetti fell on us like snow, and fireworks lit the sky. Eddie would be coming home soon, and so would Joe. Over breakfast on the veranda, Grace read to us from the letter she’d written to him. “ ‘I’m so looking forward to seeing you, kissing you, and making love to you.’ ” Two weeks later, she received his response. The envelope didn’t have a return address, but the postmark showed that it had been mailed in the United States.

“He’s home already!” Grace said excitedly as she tore open the envelope and pulled out a single sheet of folded paper. She began reading aloud. “ ‘Dear Grace, You’ve tried hard these past months to keep me interested, but it’s finally come time for me to be frank with you. I can’t see you. Please stop writing to me. Joe.’ ”

It is difficult for a snake to go back to hell when it has tasted heaven
. That night, I caught her stuffing clothes into her suitcase. I woke up Ruby and together we stopped Grace from running away. She’d been there for me when I found out I was pregnant, and now Tommy and I let her sleep in our bed, where I could keep an eye on her. Grace had helped Ruby through her grief by taking her to Miami after Yori died, and now Ruby sat with Grace on the beach for hours on end as she stared out at the ocean so still under the hot and humid sky. The world was at peace again, and the three of us had reached our own truce.

RUBY

Sunny-Side Up

We’d been in Miami for eight months. I dumped the rubber king after he proposed. (No one would tie me down.) So we were back in our beach hotel—happy with our suite of rooms and attentive doormen. Grace and I were playing the Beachcomber. We had a group of harmless stage-door Johnnies, and we basked in the glow of our mutual success. Grace’s body—skinny legs and big tits—had finally caught up to the time and place. Every magazine and newspaper wanted to photograph her, even more than they did me. I didn’t let it bother me too much. Tommy had recently turned four and would be going to kindergarten the following year. Helen started to plan. “Soon Eddie and I will be a broken mirror rejoined—a husband and wife together again. I don’t want to return to San Francisco, and none of us wants to be on the road again. I’m going to look for a house.” It sounded good to Grace and me, and we asked her to look for something for us too.

Club business was bigger than ever as men returned stateside.
We survived. Bring on the drinks! Bring on the girls!
I took up with a Cuban sugar king, and he introduced Grace to a pineapple prince—also Cuban—named Mario, who was sweet enough. (He and Grace sure could mambo.) The sugar king proposed to me, so I immediately gave him the boot. “I’m not the marrying kind,” I said, and I meant it. A week later, Mario proposed to Grace. “Nothing wrong in marrying
for money,” Helen advised. “You’ll be set for life.” Helen had once said something similar to Grace about marrying Monroe. Grace was never going to marry this guy either. Mario wasn’t a bad sort; she just didn’t love him.

On Christmas Eve, Helen packed away her photo of Lai Kai, and then off we went to the airport. When she spotted Eddie, she swooped up Tommy and pointed. “There’s your daddy!” Eddie looked as cool as ever. He’d been mustered out of the Army with a standard suit, a pair of shoes, an overcoat, and an old-fashioned trilby. He moved just like he always had—with inimitable grace—but somehow he seemed a little lost. He hugged us one by one. He shook Tommy’s hand, careful not to scare him. We climbed into the rubber king’s convertible—I wasn’t about to return it!—and drove to our hotel. In the rearview mirror, I saw Eddie’s eyes shifting from side to side. A horn blared next to us, and he jumped so high he nearly flew out of the car.

A small tree with white flocking and red balls sat on the table in our shared living area. Helen was obviously thrilled Eddie was home, and he acted happy to be with all of us, but the poor guy just wasn’t the same. He tried mightily to put up a good front, though. When Tommy worried that Santa wouldn’t find him because we didn’t have snow or a chimney like he saw in his picture books, Eddie hammered five nails into the windowsill, hung our stockings, put some cookies on a saucer, and promised, “Santa will come right through this window.” That night, Tommy slept with Grace and me so the married couple could have some time alone—to talk. The next morning, Helen opened our door and called, “Merry Christmas!”

Eddie gave us French perfume, Hermès silk scarves, and the softest kid gloves you can imagine. Grace, Helen, and I had shopped together, so we didn’t have a lot of surprises: straw purses embellished with appliquéd tropical fruits and flowers, earrings, bangles, and—now that shortages and rationing were over—brightly colored skirts with fluffy petticoats. Grace and I gave Eddie bathing trunks, shorts, a Panama hat, and sandals—to welcome him to Miami. Helen’s present:
a stylish tuxedo. “So you can dance again,” she said. Eddie stared at it for the longest time before trying it on.

Tommy had to be about the luckiest little cuss that year. His mom and his aunties gave him clothes, coloring books, and toy trucks. In France, Eddie had bought a set of antique tin soldiers for his son to play with backstage. Tommy, overcoming his initial shyness, climbed on Eddie’s lap and pronounced this “the best Christmas ever.” Maybe for him, but I thought his dad might burst into tears.

A
T THE CLUB
, while Helen was backstage with Tommy, Eddie danced the bolero, tango, and rumba with customers to try to get back in the swing of things. Soon he and Helen (and the kid too, of course) started staying after the last show so they could practice their old routines and come up with some new ones. (They didn’t have a traditional marriage, but they did love each other, and they’d always been fabulous dance partners.) Eddie was sober and physically strong, but Grace and I could hear him prowling around the suite’s living room all night. In the morning, Helen, Eddie, and Tommy would emerge from their room looking exhausted. Helen said Eddie often woke up shivering and drenched in sweat. He was nervous and jittery, cringing any time he heard a loud noise and during the fireworks on New Year’s Eve. By now my friends and I had all suffered. Time, love, and companionship had helped each of us. I hoped the same would happen for Eddie, and his anxious state would pass.

In February 1946, Grace and I headlined the Miami branch of the Latin Quarter. A week into our run, the manager came backstage after the second show and told us two men at table ten—the best in the house—wanted to see us. Grace and I dressed in gowns, fluffed our hair, reapplied lipstick, and then went out to see just who they were. My body was as slippery as an eel under my sequined gown as I slithered through the tables. My skin was translucent. A sparkling rhinestone clip held my gardenias in place.

“It’s Lee Mortimer!” I squealed in surprise and delight, grabbing Grace’s arm. “He’s the one who sponsored me to get out of Topaz!”

Lee looked just the same: tall forehead, bright white teeth, a cigarette held between his forefinger and middle finger with an air of casual sophistication. Next to him sat a big Irish ape of a guy with a half-chewed cigar clamped in his mouth. His name was Tom Ball.

“I wanted Tom to see you, Ruby,” Lee said. Once a sponsor, always a sponsor? “And of course everyone’s heard of the Oriental Danseuse—”

“Show business,” I interrupted before he could get too carried away with Grace. “One minute you’re up …” I slowly lifted one of my legs up, up, up until my sequined skirt slipped into my crotch and my leg extended above my head. (“All the way to high heaven” is what Lee would later write about that move.) “The next minute you’re down,” I purred as I brought my gold-satin high heel back to the floor. “I ought to know, darling. My career has truly been a roller-coaster ride.”