Palisades Park (4 page)

But she was hard to miss, and every time he looked across the midway he saw her working her stand, her blonde hair getting in her eyes—which Eddie now knew, maddeningly, were as lucid as pearls.

2

Fort Lee, New Jersey, 1930

T
HAT MORNING,
A
DELE—
still in her bathrobe, hair unwashed, utterly bereft of makeup—had answered the doorbell to find a tall, handsome man, impeccably dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit, standing on the doorstep. He was a dead ringer for Greta Garbo’s onetime heartthrob John Gilbert, but Adele, suddenly conscious of an unruly lock of hair in her eyes, feared she looked less like Garbo than Harpo.

“Does a Mr. Franklin Worth live here, ma’am?” he asked.

And he called her
ma’am.
Could the day get any worse?

She blew the hair out of her eyes and replied, “Yes. He’s my father.”

He flashed a badge at her. “Special Agent Crais. I’m with the United States Secret Service. May I come in?”

Holy Toledo—a real, honest-to-God G-man. “Yes, of course, come in.”

Her mother, Marie, appeared just as the agent was showing Adele a letter addressed to President Herbert Hoover. “Have you seen this before?”

Adele immediately recognized her father’s handwriting. Her stomach began to coil. “No,” she said. “He wrote this to the
President
?”

“Just the latest in a series, I’m afraid,” the agent informed her.

Unbeknownst to Adele or Marie, Franklin had apparently been mailing belligerent letters to President Hoover for months. Hoover had served as national conservator during the Great War; Franklin’s screeds accused him of killing the East Coast’s film industry by withholding coal needed to heat studios. Since Hoover was currently being blamed for all the ills in the country up to and including acne and cloudy days, the White House didn’t pay much attention until Franklin’s letters became overtly threatening.

Marie was mortified beyond words, but when Adele introduced the agent to Franklin, her father appeared surprised.

“I never wrote this,” he said as he examined the letter. Grudgingly he conceded, “I thought I’d only—
thought
about writing it.”

“So when you tell the President you would like to, quote, remove his liver with a pair of garden shears, unquote,” the agent said, “you’re saying that wasn’t your actual intention?”

“Oh Good Lord, no! I’d never really do that, not even to Hoover.”

Adele caught the agent’s eye and mimed the tipping of a glass. Crais took a step closer to Franklin, and to the smell on his breath at eight in the morning.

“I … think I understand,” he said slowly. “Mr. Worth, may I suggest you refrain from writing any further letters to President Hoover.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Franklin agreed gruffly.

As she showed him out, Adele promised the agent that in the future she and her mother would more closely monitor Franklin’s correspondence.

He tipped his hat. “Thank you, ma’am, your country appreciates it.”

Again with the
ma’am.
Adele forced a smile, then closed the door. Marie, just a few steps behind her, said, “I’m so embarrassed I could die.”

“
You’re
embarrassed? He looked like John Gilbert, for God’s sake!”

By the time Adele got to Palisades to ready the root-beer stand for tomorrow’s opening, she felt humiliated, angry, and in absolutely no mood to have some husky blond guy from across the midway put the make on her—so she bit off his head with one bite.

But opening days always put Adele in a better mood. The next day, the park smelled of French fries, waffles, roast beef sandwiches, and sizzling hot dogs; the weather was perfect, sunny but not too hot, and crowds intent on having a good time thronged the midways. Palisades may have been just an amusement park, not Broadway, but there was still an air of theatricality about it: many concession agents not only had a signature bally but a wardrobe designed to capture attention. Kid Fiddles worked the crowd with a cowboy hat and a live horse. Jimmy Feathers, whose grocery wheel paid off in these hard times not with kewpie dolls but with food, did his bally in five different languages, which always drew a big “tip,” or crowd. Jackie Bloom wore an immaculate white linen suit, and despite the hundred fifteen-watt bulbs illuminating the prizes in his showcases, he always managed to look cool and composed:

“Knock down a cat, win a prize! Kayo just one fuzzy feline and win a piece of fine imported china!”

“Try your hand at the Penny Pitch, first throw is free, hit the right square with the penny and win a prize!”

“Ride the Skyrocket, see the moon and stars up close, come hurtling back to earth and up again! Just ten cents for a Skyrocket to the stars!”

Adele launched into her own bally:

“Root beer, ice-cold root beer! Only legal beer in the park! Not as much fun as malt, but just as delicious and twice as foamy! C’mon, lift a glass to Carrie Nation!”

It wasn’t the Great White Way, but it was still performing—and Adele loved to perform.

*   *   *

From across the midway, Eddie noted that the snippy blonde at the root-beer stand was building a pretty good tip with her grind. But Lew’s wasn’t half bad either: “Cotton candy, popcorn! Watch it being made, sugar spun into delectable fairy floss right before your very eyes!” Business was brisk and Eddie was kept busy providing pink clouds of candy on a stick for the crowds. Everything went smoothly until late afternoon and the sound of a loud, slurred voice emanating from Jackie Bloom’s stand next door:

“Hey! Hey! I godda
great
idea—”

Eddie glanced over to see a man bobbing on his heels like a wobbly ten-pin, who then bent over to pick something off the ground. In his back pocket was a flask, doubtless containing a recent vintage of bathtub gin.

Eddie heard him call out, “Gotcha!”—and when the drunk stood up again he was holding a tiny white kitten in his fist, one of a new litter of woodshop cats stalking the park for scraps of food. Eddie saw where this was heading, and so did Jackie Bloom, who held up his palms and said, “Now, wait a second, pal … put the little critter down…”

“No, no, thiz great, see?” the man announced loudly. “Use a
cat
—to knock
down
a cat! Oughta get extra points for that!” He laughed uproariously, and a few of the idiots with him laughed along.

The kitten hissed and snarled, but he was gripping her so tightly she couldn’t lash out. Now he made a great show of winding up his pitch, like Lefty Gomez about to launch one across home plate.

Eddie vaulted the counter of his stand, and before the drunk could let the fur fly, literally, Eddie reached out and grabbed his right arm.

“Yeah, you’re a riot, all right,” Eddie said. “Now put the cat down.”

Eddie squeezed the man’s arm, hard, which caused his fingers to relax their grip on the feline. Eddie reached up with his free hand, grabbed the kitten by the scruff of the neck, and let it spring out of his hand and onto the ground, where it quickly made a run for the border.

The drunk was furious that his joke, his grand stunt, had been ruined. “Who the fug are
you
?” he snapped.

“I’m the guy who just stopped you from making an even bigger knucklehead of yourself,” Eddie said mildly.

The man glared belligerently at him but took in Eddie’s size and staggered away without further incident. Eddie was on his way back to his own stand when he noted that across the midway, the blonde at the root-beer booth was staring at him, as if noticing him for the first time. Then, catching his gaze, she quickly turned away and returned to work.

But come midnight, closing time, Eddie was startled to find the blonde standing at his counter, asking, “Your name’s Eddie, right?”

“Uh … yeah, that’s right.”

“See? I’ve got a good memory, just bad manners.” She smiled sheepishly. “A girl gets so many come-ons in this business, she starts thinking every guy who looks at her cockeyed is a wolf she’s got to beat off with a stick. And I was having a bad day too. Sorry.”

“Oh, well … that’s okay,” Eddie said magnanimously.

“My name’s Adele Worth. I’m on my way over to the sideshow, we’re putting together a little party. You want to come along?”

Eddie was surprised but pleased. “Sure.”

“It’s potluck, you got anything left over?”

Eddie filled a big bucket with cotton candy and another with popcorn; Adele cadged a tub of fries from the hot-dog vendor. As they made their way to the sideshow tent, Eddie asked, “So how long you worked here?”

“Two seasons. But it’s just a summer job. I’m really a movie actress.”

Eddie tried not to sound incredulous. “You are?”

“I was in a bunch of two-reelers when I was a little girl. Fort Lee used to be the motion picture capital of the world, didn’t you know?”

Eddie had to admit that no, he hadn’t.

“I haven’t done any pictures in a while,” Adele admitted. “The directors say my eyes don’t photograph well because they’re so light. I’m waiting for Technicolor to become standard, then I think they’ll be an asset.”

“I think your eyes are beautiful,” Eddie said. “Or was that a come-on?”

She laughed. “Probably. But I’ll take it as a compliment instead.”

They arrived at the tent housing the Palisades Park Circus Side Show—or, as Eddie knew it from the carny, a “ten-in-one,” ten acts under one tent. A line of colorful banners flapped in the breeze, each displaying illustrations of the attractions alongside breathless prose:

ALL ACTS ALIVE ON THE INSIDE!

FATTEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD—JOLLY IRENE!

SUSI, THE ELEPHANT SKIN GIRL!

CHARLES PHELAN, STRONG MAN!

VICTOR-VICTORIA—HALF MAN, HALF WOMAN!

HOPPE THE FROG BOY!

They went around back, where Jolly Irene, all six hundred and fifty pounds of her, was reclining on a divan big enough to seat three people, eating pizza pies—she had several stacked up beside her—consuming them as if they were Communion wafers. Her real name was Amanda Siebert, and her husband, George, was the sideshow’s inside talker. Amanda was usually a featured performer at Coney Island, but Adolph Schwartz, the sideshow manager, lured her to Palisades for the season. “I was born in Jersey City,” Amanda told them. “I got a soft spot for Palisades.”

Adele said, “I like your act. How you joke around with the audience.”

“Nobody likes a sad fat girl, honey. I’m not some skinny film star like Vilma Banky and I know it, so why not have a laugh about it? Besides, what do I have to be sad about? I probably make more money than Vilma Banky, I’ve got a wonderful husband, and I can eat whatever I want.”

“And you’re a star,” Adele said, with noticeable envy.

“Star, hell. I’m a whole galaxy!” Amanda laughed.

Eddie knew that a good fat lady could command a lot of money, even in bad times like these; but it still seemed odd to him that a beautiful girl like Adele should envy the life of a freak.

Soon, three more performers arrived: Charlotte Vogel, aka Susi the Elephant Skin Girl, and Julius and Erna Keuhnel, who, like Charlotte, came from Germany. Julius was Charlotte’s manager and she lived with them in their apartment in Manhattan. “You do the magic act, don’t you, Mrs. Keuhnel?” Adele said. “You don’t see many women magicians around.”

“Yes, well, if women now have the right to vote,” Mrs. Keuhnel said wryly, “why should we not have the right to saw other women in half?”

Charlotte—Susi—was a young German woman who suffered from ichthyosis, her skin resembling the thick, gray hide of an elephant, though her face was normal and quite pretty. Like Irene, she had performed at Coney, where she said she’d had one particularly ardent fan:

“There was a gentleman, if you wish to call him that, who came to every one of my shows and began loitering around the tents waiting for me to leave. Eventually he proposed marriage. And when I turned him down, he went right to work making time with Lena the Leopard Girl!”

Amanda hooted at that. “Oh, I had a couple guys like that. One wanted me to sit on his face. I told him, ‘Are you nuts? I’ll kill you!’ He said, ‘Yes, but I’d die a happy man!’” After a burst of laughter all around, Amanda said, with a tender glance toward her husband, “Boy, was I ever lucky to find George. See what he gave me last year for our eighth wedding anniversary?” She showed off a jeweled wristwatch that glinted even in the dimness. Adele and Charlotte cooed enviously at it, but it seemed to Eddie that “Susi” was envying more than just a piece of jewelry.

After an hour of convivial talk, the party broke up and Eddie and Adele walked together down to Palisade Avenue. “We had an alligator-skin girl on the Sheeshley Show,” Eddie recalled, “but she wasn’t as smart and sweet as Susi—Charlotte. She just seemed kind of … damaged.”

“Everybody’s damaged,” Adele said off handedly. “Susi just has hers on the outside.”

Eddie didn’t know how to respond to that, but knew he didn’t want the evening to end. He offered to buy coffee at Joe’s Restaurant across the street, where they slid into a booth and ordered some joe. Adele talked a little about her family—she lived with her parents and two brothers on Cumbermeade Road in Fort Lee—then asked, “So you’re from Jersey?”

“Yeah, Newark. I left home a long time ago, though, to work carnies.”

“Your folks must have been happy to see you again.”

“I … haven’t been back.” He hesitated, then felt obligated to explain, “My dad is dead. He was killed in a foundry accident.”

“Oh God, I’m so sorry.”

“S’okay. It was a long time ago—1923.”

Such a foolish whim—pulling back the sheet covering his father’s body so he could say goodbye. Jack Stopka had been killed when a mold being filled with molten steel broke loose and fell on him. What remained no longer looked anything like Eddie’s dad; there was nothing left to say goodbye to. But the image had seared itself into his memory.

Eddie blinked back tears and hoped Adele couldn’t tell.

“What about your mom?” Adele asked.