The Impersonator (23 page)

The second half opened with Claude Delaney, a ventriloquist whose dummy recited familiar poetry that had been reworded into amusing ditties. A woman singer followed—she was such a “fish” that I suspected it was her first week onstage. And likely her last. Finally my Scottish friends made their entrance, and I pressed my tongue against my teeth and let loose a whistle that made the twins jump sky-high. “Sorry,” I smiled. “Very uncouth, I know.” And I whistled again as the bagpipes struck up their plaintive wail. For thirteen minutes the six Scotsmen sang folk songs, danced the Highland fling, played the pipes and bodhran drum, and climaxed with a dangerous flaming torch and sword dance, perfectly executed. Thundering applause escorted them from the stage and brought them back two times. I was as proud as a parent.

The next-to-last act was Jack Benny, whose straight face and knack for timing brought laughter to the simplest lines. He screeched when he played his violin, not from lack of skill but on purpose to add humor to his act. Many’s the time I’d heard him play his old instrument better than any pro in the pit. His gags flopped, but I whistled and applauded like a madwoman. Never mind, I’m sure he could tell from the tepid audience response that tonight his routine was off. Cats and Rats ended the show, astonishing the audience as rats rode peacefully on cats’ backs around a track, crossed tightropes, and for the finale, walked across a raised platform carrying miniature American flags.

“However do they teach them to
do
that!” exclaimed Valerie as we worked our way out of the box and down the side steps.

“They stuff the cats and starve the rats,” I said bluntly. “Come on.”

I could find my way backstage at any theater in the world blindfolded, with nothing but my sense of smell to guide me. The wings teemed with performers dodging in and out of dressing rooms, musicians packing up their instruments, and stage crew hauling down lights, sweeping floors, and repairing scenery for Monday’s new lineup. Shouts, scrapes, crashes, arguments, and warning calls—“Watch out! Heads up! Coming through!”—surrounded us. Boys who worked for free to see the show trotted alongside electricians, scene shifters, and carpenters like young apprentices eager to help. Everything was confusion and noise. It sounded like home.

I saw the Highlanders at once. “Scotty, you old rascal! How are you?” I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him like a long-lost father.

“There ye are, lass. I ken ye were out there the moment I heard the unholy whistle. Let me swatch at ye,” he said, holding me at arm’s length. “My, an’ don’t ye swatch bonnie as a picture! I heard about yer good fortune. Word travels, it does.”

I introduced the twins who bobbed a quick curtsy and giggled as Scotty bowed low and kissed their hands.

“Ah, lass, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Since … last September, I think, in Denver, eh?”

I nodded happily. “You were wonderful tonight. Better than ever. And such applause! You killed ’em.”

“Thank ye, lass. The lads are working hard. Now, tell us about yerself, lass. How’s civilian life treatin’ ye?”

“Well enough, really and truly. But I’m a little homesick. I—” And to my horror, tears sprang into my eyes. I blinked them away quickly, but not before Scotty saw. He put an arm around my shoulder.

“There, there. I miss the Highlands somethin’ fierce at times, but you can’t go through life lookin’ backward. Life is guid when you’ve got kith an’ kin, and you’ve got both now, eh?”

I nodded. “Everything’s good for me now.”

He heard the lack of enthusiasm and chucked me under the chin. “Don’t go romancin’ the past, lass. Every path ye follow goes some rocky, some smooth. Find yerself a guid man and have some bairns. Them out there”—he jerked his head toward the empty rows—“think it’s glamorous, but ye an’ I ken the truth of it. Ye don’t have to leave vaudeville—you can aye be part of the audience. Now…” He planted a loud buss on both my cheeks. “It’s the end of a fine week an’ me an’ the lads are headin’ out to see a man about a dog. I’d ask ye to come wi’ us but these two fillies ye have in tow don’t quite fit in wi’ our plans.”

“That’s all right, we need to get back to the hotel soon. But first I need to find Jack Benny.”

“Ah, Benny. He’s had a rough week, he has. Almost got canceled on Wednesday.” Scotty started to say something else but the lads hauled him away as I blew kisses at them all.

“What does that mean?” asked Caroline, pointing to a sign that read,
DO NOT SEND OUT YOUR LAUNDRY UNTIL AFTER THE FIRST MATINEE.

“Oh, that. It’s a reminder not to tie yourself down until the manager has seen your first act, which is the matinee. If he doesn’t like it, he’ll hand you your photos and you’re out.” I turned toward Valerie and bumped squarely into Jack Benny, who was heading out of his dressing room, his violin case in one hand and his hat in the other.

“Benny!” I cried, giving him a hug while his hands were still full. I should have called him Jack, but when we were first onstage together, before the Great War, his last name was his first. Under cover of the hug, I whispered in his ear, “Don’t ask me any questions!”

No one ad-libs better than a vaudeville pro, and Benny was certainly that. “Well, well, if this isn’t a wonderful surprise,” he said mildly. “I heard you had retired a few months ago and gone home.” He chose his words carefully, and looked pointedly at the twins as he spoke.

“Yes. I’m using my real name now, Jessie Carr. These are my cousins, Valerie and Caroline Carr. Girls, this is Mr. Jack Benny.”

Although the girls hadn’t been overwhelmed by Benny’s act, they were round-eyed at meeting yet another handsome young man.

“How’s my second-best girl?” he asked me.

“Does that mean you are still seeing Mary Kelly?”

He smiled and nodded. “Yes, she’s a great girl, but I’m afraid—well, did you know her brother’s a Catholic priest, for crying out loud? Her father doesn’t approve of shiftless vaudeville performers, especially Jewish ones.”

“You have a great future ahead of you!”

“Only a dear friend would say that after watching tonight’s show.”

“So you had an off night; what’s new about that? You’ll bounce back next week.”

A swarthy young man passed us and Benny called to him. “Oh, Rodrigo! There’s something I’d like you to do, if you have no objection to showing pretty girls around. Rodrigo is stage manager here at the Egyptian, and he’s very good at giving backstage tours of this enchanting new theater, aren’t you, Rodrigo?”

Rodrigo professed his love of escorting attractive young ladies backstage, and the twins were whisked off for a lesson in stage props before they could blink an eye.

“Can we talk now? What’s this I hear about investigators?”

“What did you hear?” I asked carefully.

“That a Pinkerton caught up with the Darlings in Milwaukee and was nosing around. The word is, you’re in line to inherit some money from some distant relatives. Is that so?”

“More or less,” I said, steering carefully between truth and fiction.

“You’re not in any trouble, are you? What’s going on?”

I had worked out ahead of time how much I would tell Benny. I hated having to lie to him. I had been hoping that he hadn’t heard anything at all about me. My throat tightened, but I had to go on.

“It’s perfectly all right, Benny. I’ve come into some money and the lawyers just wanted to make sure I was the genuine article. The Pinkertons are looking up the acts I worked with over the past few years. Won’t find many of ’em, the way things change in this business, but it will make them happy to have tried.”

I’ve never been a good liar. A good actress, yes, but acting is pretending, not lying, and it’s done in front of people who are willing participants in the deception. No one in an audience ever really believed I was Romeo’s Juliet or a Chinese schoolgirl or any of the characters I played. Lying is different. Lying to people I know is hard. I don’t think I do it very well.

Judging from the penetrating stare Benny fastened on me, I was right. I turned the conversation away from myself with a question.

“Where are you playing next week, Benny?”

“Salem. A quick jump, one week. Then it’s on to San Francisco for a longer stint at Pantages. Do you live in Portland now?”

“No, the family home is in Dexter, a small town on the coast a couple hours from here by train. We just came into the city for the weekend to shop.”

“Are you happy?”

“Sure! Everything’s wonderful.”

His wry look told me I was losing my touch. Picking his words with the care of a man writing a telegram and paying for every word, he said, “You miss the business. It’s in your blood.”

“I guess so.”

“I understand, doll. We all understand. They don’t.”

“Look, Benny, there is something else. I can’t explain everything right now, but I need to ask you a favor. I really need some help, and I thought you might do something for me tomorrow, on your day off. Just take a trip to the police station and ask a few questions for me. Do you mind?”

Worried eyes searched my face. “You
are
in some sort of trouble!”

“No trouble. Well, not really. Not me, I mean. I just need some information, that’s all, and they aren’t going to give it to a woman.”

His nod told me to continue.

“Tell the police you’re from Canada, a Mountie or a Pinkerton—do they have Pinkertons in Canada?”

“You let me worry about the cover story.”

“Wear a disguise, in case they recognize you from the theater. Tell them you’re investigating a woman’s murder in Canada somewhere, and you want to know if there have been any similar murders in Portland since 1916. Any unsolved murders where a young woman was strangled and some of her hair cut off.”

Benny gave me one very long look before he said, “And if they tell me of one, what do you want to know?”

“I want to know everything about that file that they’ll let you copy. Name, date, and any details about the victim.”

“How can I reach you?”

“Send a letter to Jessie Carr at Cliff House in Dexter.”

He gave it some thought. Benny wasn’t one to make promises he didn’t intend to keep. “My train doesn’t leave until three in the afternoon. I can do that for you at noon and then leave town.”

“Thank you, Benny. I owe you.”

He took my arm and we walked to the theater door. “Oh, Rodrigo,” he called over his shoulder. “Time to return the little lambs to the shepherd.” And turning to me, he said quietly, “If you can’t tell me the truth, I won’t press you. We go back too far for that. But you know how to find me if you need to.”

I hugged him hard. “It’s been so good seeing you again, Benny. Good to breathe some two-a-day air.”

He gave me his tight little grin and a kiss on the cheek, then tipped his hat to the twins and turned to go. Watching his back disappear down the dark alley made me feel quite alone in a very big world.

“He’s handsome, isn’t he?” said Valerie. “Was he your beau?”

“Oh, maybe he was, once, a long time ago. But then he became something even better—my friend.”

31

The twins and I had planned to return to the hotel for dessert after the show, but as we headed toward the streetcar, Caroline spotted an ice-cream parlor on the corner. “Oh, look, Jessie! Can we go there instead?”

“Why not?”

The theater crowd had already filled the ice-cream parlor to the bursting point, but a boy showed us to a round table for two, dragging a third chair over from the corner for me. With a full house, it was twenty minutes before he delivered our banana split and two sundaes. We were busy dissecting the various acts we’d just seen when Caroline suddenly gasped. “That looks like—it is! Look over there. Under the street lamp. See him? It’s that David Murray!”

It was David again all right, hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth from heel to toe, obviously waiting for someone.

“Maybe we should invite him to join us?” suggested Valerie, a bit tentatively. “He’s really very good-looking, isn’t he?”

“Don’t get any ideas; he’s our cousin.”

“Hush up, Caro, I wasn’t getting ideas! I was just saying he’s good-looking. I’m allowed to say someone is good-looking if I want to! Isn’t he good-looking, Jessie?”

“Lower your voices, girls. People are staring.”

“Shall we invite him inside?” whispered Valerie.

“There isn’t room at the table,” I said.

“But—”

At that moment, David caught sight of someone he knew. A few long strides took him out of our view.

“Why didn’t Mother want us to meet David?” persisted Valerie. “He seemed nice at dinner, even though he didn’t talk much. And he is our cousin, even if it’s only halfway, isn’t he? Oughtn’t that to count for something?”

“Your mother didn’t want you to meet him because he’s a bastard,” I said.

Valerie gasped. Caroline’s hand flew to her throat. “You shouldn’t say swear words!”

“‘Bastard’ isn’t a swear word.”

“Yes it is. I’ve heard Henry use it, when I was hiding in the parlor one time, behind the Coromandel screen. He was telling Ross that he called someone a you-know-what and they got into a fight.”

Mentally noting the possibilities of the Coromandel screen, I replied, “Well, some people use it as an insult, but it isn’t a swear word.” I looked at them both, their fresh faces devoid of makeup and their eyes wide with an earnest innocence, and I knew the answer before I asked. “You do know what a bastard is, don’t you?”

“Of course. Mother explained it the other day. Someone whose parents had a marriage that wasn’t exactly legal.”

Geez, Louise. These two girls—sixteen years old—had no idea how babies came into the world. It was hard for me to believe, growing up in the circumstances I did, that anyone over the age of ten could be unaware of sexual relations between men and women, but their world had been more sheltered than mine. They’d been kept close to home, tutored by governesses, with few friends their own age and no babies to help care for, so it had been easy for Aunt Victoria to keep them entirely innocent of things she did not wish them to know. David’s appearance at dinner had jeopardized her conspiracy of silence. She wasn’t ready to let them grow up … if, indeed, she would ever be ready.