Looking for a Love Story (29 page)

The next day Ellie had gone back to being tough again. “We’re going back on the road as soon as the doctor says Baby can travel,” she told Joe. He’d tried to argue that there was no hurry and they could wait a little while longer to let Ellie rest. But she wouldn’t hear of it. “This layover cost you, Joe,” she’d said. “You were just starting to get noticed when we stopped working.” She was right about that; by the end of their last tour, Joe’s act had been the one that was regularly singled out, both in reviews by the local newspapers and in the weekly reports that theater managers sent back to the bookers in Manhattan. “You know how the business is,” she said to Joe. “You should have been building on those reviews.”

“We had something else to do,” he’d said.

“You need to get back in front of the public right away.”

So the sixteen-year-old kid he’d married had started trouping with an infant that was still only a few weeks old. She’d worked right along with Joe, reading the newspapers and writing the monologues, and at night when Baby cried, Ellie stumbled out of bed quickly to quiet her. “Go back to sleep, you need your rest,” she’d say to Joe. “You’re the one going onstage.”

That first tour after the layoff hadn’t been a picnic. They booked a small circuit out in the sticks so Joe could get his timing back. It had been three months of one-night stands, five shows a day, and hotels that were clean but that was all you could say for them. When they finally managed to book Shell Point, he was beat. He could only imagine how Ellie felt. But she never complained. Not the tough girl who was his partner.

Joe got out of bed and put on his robe. Ellie and Baby would be back soon. It was time to start the day.

ELLIE HAD MANAGED
to maneuver the carriage down the steps by clamping on the brakes and dragging it behind her. Baby was crying now. Ellie reached into the carriage and picked up the child and then as she straightened up she saw it: an automobile parked by the curb at the far end of the park. It was probably a Stutz Bearcat, or maybe it was a Duesenberg—Ellie didn’t know much about cars—but whatever the make it was a dashing vehicle and very expensive-looking. It was painted white, and the man behind the wheel was dressed in white too. He was so far away that Ellie couldn’t make out his features, but she didn’t need to. She hadn’t seen Benny in two years, but she would have known the shape of his head, and the way he held himself, anywhere. The boardwalk behind her and the beach and the bright sunny sky started to spin. She put her crying daughter back in the carriage and watched her
own hands cling to the wicker-covered handle for support. It was as if she had no connection to those hands, or the carriage handle, or the sky, or the trees at the end of the park where Benny’s car stood. She wondered if she was going to be sick.

The last time I saw him, I was sick too. But then it was morning sickness
. That thought steadied her. She looked up. Even from this far away she could see his bright blond hair gleaming in the sunshine. For a brief, crazy moment she thought about holding up his child so he could see the head of golden curls that were exactly like his. The baby’s eyes were his shade of blue—although he wouldn’t be able to see them from this distance. As these insane thoughts raced through her brain, he must have realized that she’d seen him, because across the park the sleek car roared into life and pulled away from the curb. She thought maybe he was going to drive to her side of the park and stop in front of her, and her heart raced painfully in her chest. But the car turned in the narrow street and went off in the opposite direction. The sound it made lingered in the air after it was out of sight. Then everything was still again—so still it was as if nothing had happened. It was as if the car and the man had been a figment of Ellie’s imagination. As if she’d been daydreaming. Maybe she had. Maybe the whole incident was nothing more than wishful thinking on her part. But she knew better.

He wanted to see us. He wanted to see me. But he left. Again
.

Her heart stopped pounding. She leaned over to soothe her crying child. And she felt the tears on her own cheeks. She began pushing the carriage—fast now. She had to get back to the hotel. She would pick up the morning newspaper in the lobby and take it upstairs to Joe so they could work on the day’s monologue. She’d be safe, working with Joe.

•   •   •

ELLIE NEVER TOLD
anyone about that day in Shell Point when the sporty roadster appeared across the park. There wouldn’t have been any point in telling Joe—at least that was what she told herself. Besides, there were times when she thought she really had imagined the whole thing. Certainly, Benny never did it again. At least, not as far as she knew.

And while it would be a lie to say she didn’t know what Benny was doing—he was rising so fast in the Keith organization that the trade papers were full of stories about him—she and Joe had begun a two-year odyssey of their own. With Baby, they endured milk-train jumps from small town to small town, as they made their way from New York to Canada to Oregon, Colorado, and Illinois. And in every town and in every theater, their one topic of conversation and their one goal was improving the act. It took all of their energy and left time for nothing else. They kept at it for two long years, until Joe finally got his shot at the Big Time.

CHAPTER 29

Pastor’s Boardinghouse
,
New York
1923

Ellie ran out the front door of Pastor’s Boardinghouse and headed east. The boardinghouse was on Forty-fifth Street and Broadway and her destination was St. Patrick’s Cathedral. She was going to ask God to help Joe when he opened his act the following week. Because after two years of touring the small-time she and Joe were in New York City, and Joe was booked—for a whole week—in a theater called the Jefferson. All the New York scouts and booking agents went to see the new acts that played the Jefferson, and if Joe went over, he’d work the big-time circuits for the rest of his career. Being a hit at the Jefferson could lead to an engagement at the Palace.

Ellie turned toward Fifth Avenue, moving quickly. When she’d left their rooms at the boardinghouse, Joe was just beginning to wake up. He’d wait until Baby was awake, then he’d dress her and take her downstairs for breakfast. He loved doing things with
her—there was a connection between them that Ellie found confusing. Sometimes she thought life in general was confusing.

She still had memories—golden little scraps of them—of Benny smiling his dazzling smile or ordering a hot fudge sundae for her. There were memories of nights with him in her hotel room after everyone was asleep. And there was a newer memory, of a white automobile gleaming in the sunshine at the edge of a park. There was the vision of that automobile driving away—and the tears on her cheeks as she’d watched it go. The confusing part was, even now she wasn’t sure what she would do if someone were to tell her she could have those lovely little scraps back, that she could have the nights again, that she could make the car turn around and drive the other way. That she could have Benny back. Because there was Joe. Her relationship with him was the most confusing thing of all.

For a while she’d stopped thinking about their marriage and whatever Joe might be feeling about it. There simply hadn’t been the time or the energy. After Baby was born and they were booking small-time tours, they were too busy working and traveling to worry about love or relationships or anything but making sure Baby was clean and fed before they fell into bed at night. But then they’d started to reach their goal. That had happened, as many things in show business did, by sheer luck.

About a year after the gig in Shell Point, when she and Joe were two years into their marriage that wasn’t one, Joe was booked as a disappointment act on a big-time circuit. Suddenly, they were touring major cities: Joe played Chicago, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, Oakland, San Francisco, Denver, and Detroit, and then the tour doubled back to Chicago again. He was working in plush houses, the act was booked for one or two weeks at a time, and he and Ellie and Baby could afford to stay in nice hotels.

It was easier to work on the monologue when they were staying
in the same place for a few days; they didn’t have to write as much new material for every show. And Joe himself was becoming looser and freer onstage as his confidence grew. The young man who had insisted on having every second of his act locked down now liked to wing a few jokes. Once, in Detroit, the audience had kept him onstage after he’d finished his regular routine, and he’d managed to ad lib for another twenty minutes.

It was during this period when things were easier that Ellie started to see Joe in a different light. It was as if she’d finally had time to relax and notice the way other people reacted to him. Other girls. The women on the tour seemed to be realizing that Joe was a comer. Suddenly he’d become attractive to the pretty flash dancers and the beautiful magician’s assistants and cute acrobats who waited for him to come offstage and regularly invited him to come along for the cast’s late-night suppers after the show—suppers Ellie skipped because she had to take her sleeping daughter back to the hotel. “But you go ahead,” she’d say to Joe. “You need to unwind.” And then she’d be angry when he went.

Something else had changed too. Now that they could afford a two-suite room, Ellie often bunked in with Baby. It wasn’t something she and Joe had planned or talked about, it just seemed to happen. Ellie wasn’t sure how she felt about it. Sharing a bed had always been slightly awkward in spite of their best efforts to downplay it. But there had been a warmth and intimacy to it too. Ellie found herself wondering if Joe missed it. She began watching him more closely when they were with the others in the company, and she made an unpleasant discovery. When all those girls flirted with Joe, he was flirting back. And he was going out to those late-night suppers.

Unpleasant as it was, it was to be expected. Joe was a man, and since she was treating him like an older brother, there had to be other women somewhere in his life. Whatever he had done in that
way, he was discreet—so far. But eventually he would have to be tired of this bargain they’d made. Maybe he already was. After all, they had agreed in the beginning that this marriage would not last forever. It had been easy to forget that with all the writing and rehearsing and packing and unpacking, but now that they were doing an easier tour, maybe Joe had had time to think as she had. And maybe he was thinking he wanted to move on. If so, Ellie was not going to stand in his way, no matter how it felt.

She waited for a night—one of the increasingly rare ones—when he came back to the hotel room after the show. Ellie watched Joe put Baby to bed and lean over to kiss her good night. Ellie felt herself swallow hard—the child was going to miss him so much. But that couldn’t be helped. A bargain was a bargain. When he turned around, she began the speech she had been preparing for days.

“Joe, when we got married, we said it was just until I was doing okay….” She thought she saw his face tighten. She understood. This was not something she wanted to face either; they had grown accustomed to each other. There was comfort in that. But she wasn’t going to back out. “I’m all right now,” she said bravely. “What I mean is, I can be. I can take care of myself.” She was trying to find the right way to say it to him, which was ridiculous because she was doing it for his own good. “I’ll always be grateful—”

“Who is it?” he shouted at her. The explosion, coming from placid, careful Joe, was shocking. Then he looked at Baby’s crib. “Who is it?” he asked again, more softly.

“What?”

“It’s that son-of-a-bitch Benny. You’ve seen him.”

The white car parked in the sunshine flashed into her mind, but there was no way Joe could have known about that. “What are you talking about?”

“The reason why you’re leaving.”

“Me?” Now it was her turn to explode.
“You’re
the one who’s been following that girl around like a puppy!”

“What girl?”

“The one who works with the violinist in the novelty act, they’re third on the bill. I don’t even know her name….”

“Marie. She’s married.”

“So are you.” He gave her a look. “But you’re not … we’re not …” She stammered and felt her face flush red. “We don’t …” she tried and failed again.

“No. We don’t,” he said steadily—but his face was getting red too.

“And if you want to … leave me … so you can …” She stopped again. “Joe, you’ve done more for me than anyone I’ve ever known. I want you to be happy. I want you to have everything you want.”

He gave her a strange little smile she couldn’t read. “I was about to say the same about you.” Then he looked away. “So you haven’t heard from Benny?”

The white automobile flashed into her mind again. But there had been no words exchanged. “No.”

“And there hasn’t been anyone else?”

“No.” She had to wait a second. “You?”

He picked his words carefully. “Not in any way that counts.” Then he had taken in a big breath. “So if neither of us … what I mean is, why do we have to change things? I don’t see the reason.”