—
IT WAS PAST ONE in the morning, and the girls were finally starting to tire. The candle was burning down to a stub, and the air of heady excitement was tapering down to yawns and fatigue. Maud herself was worn out. As the night had gone on, the girls had heard more shouting and revelry as packs of drunken boys had carried on below their windows. At one point they even heard the windows rattling—as if someone had thrown up pebbles—but when they looked below, they saw nothing and heard only the sounds of distant laughter. Maud was glad that the boys had seen the lights flickering and known that the girls also had secret cabals of which the men could have no part. At the same time, she wished desperately that she were outside, in the cold night and wide-open air, instead of trapped inside this stuffy room where all of the girls seemed to have anointed her as the purveyor of vital information about their future lives.
“We thank you, kind spirits, for revealing the secrets of the other world,” Maud said, hoping to wrap it up for the night.
“But, Maud!” Josie cried. “We haven’t asked a question for you!”
Maud had been hoping that this omission would pass unnoticed. She dreaded the indignity of asking her question only to have the question remain unanswered, because she couldn’t answer it. She did not know whom she would marry.
“Yes, Maud! We must ask for Maud,” cried a chorus of voices.
“No,” Maud said. “I don’t want to know. I don’t want to ask the spirits about myself.”
“Well, then I’ll ask,” said Josie. “Oh, spirit, please tell us the name of the man that Miss Maud Gage will marry.”
Now Maud was biting her tongue. She wanted more than anything to put a halt to all this and confess that the only spirit in this room tonight had been her own—the one that no one ever tired of telling her was far too lively. The silence had grown so long that Maud thought she would die of embarrassment when into the silence a muffled rapping sound started at the window: 1…2…3…4…5, then a lengthy silence, then one more: 6.
Maud leapt up from her seat at the table so quick that she almost knocked over the candle.
“The wind is blowing,” she said. “It’s just a pine bough batting up against the window.” She pushed open the heavy sash and frigid air rushed inside, making her shiver violently. Outside the window, she could make out the outlines of a pine tree, which was now utterly still.
“Close the window, Maud, we’re all freezing in here!” Jessie Mary said.
The girls had all lost interest and were overtaken by yawning, and the stub of their candle finally sputtered out, leaving them in darkness. Tired but full of new gossip and speculation, everyone except Josie and Maud departed for their own rooms.
The two girls settled under their covers, but Maud lay awake in her bed, thinking about her own deception. She was in so deep that she couldn’t possibly confess. And what of the six taps of the pine bough upon the window when the air was still outside? A sudden gust of wind, she told herself, had moved the branch—that was all. She tossed about until her bedclothes were rumpled.
At last she could keep quiet no longer. “Do you believe in spirits?” she whispered, thinking that if Josie had already fallen asleep, her friend would not hear.
But Josie was also wide-awake. “I do, I do, of course I do,” Josie replied. “You heard the sounds as well as I did.”
“Perhaps…” Maud thought again of confessing her role as a “medium,” only she didn’t quite dare. “Perhaps one of the girls was knocking the table?”
“But why would anyone want to do that?” Josie sounded mystified. “What good would it do to make up stories when we want real answers?”
The question hung in the air between them. Maud wasn’t sure what to say. From where she sat, people often preferred made-up stories to real answers. Hadn’t she spent her whole life around her mother’s suffragist friends, women who always had their eyes set one hundred years in the future, imagining the welfare of their daughters’ daughters’ daughters while they sometimes seemed too busy to pay attention to the flesh-and-blood girls who stood before them? Was imagining that you could see the future really any different from knocking on tables in the middle of the night?
Maud lay in silence for a while, thinking about the six faint scratches against the window. A, B, C, D, E, F—according to superstition, she should be marrying a person named F. Only what if it wasn’t F for someone’s name but, rather, a big fat F for failure?
“Guess what?” Josie was still awake. “I suddenly realized that I know exactly who would be perfect for you. You want me to tell you?”
Maud rolled over and propped her chin up on her hand, peering at her roommate’s silhouette in the other bed.
“Not at all. It doesn’t interest me in the least.”
“Oh come on, sure you do.” Josie yawned and rustled in her bed. “What girl doesn’t want to know the name of the man she’ll be married to by next year?”
“Well, you can tell it’s all nonsense just from that,” Maud said. “One year from now, I’ll be right here where I am now, studying at Sage College.”
“Oh, I can’t resist telling you. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it right away. I know someone who is just as peculiar as you!”
“Oh, ‘peculiar’! That is some compliment!” Maud said. “You’ve been on the lookout for a boy who is just as peculiar and odd and strange as Maud Gage?”
“No,” Josie said. “That’s not how I mean it. This is someone quite wonderful—he’s handsome and kind, and he’s funny, and ever so interesting.”
“Funny and kind,” Maud said. “Now, that is peculiar!”
“But there is something about him that’s—oh, you’ll just have to meet him. Come for a visit at Christmastime and I’ll see that he comes to call. He’s my cousin. His name is Frank. Frank Baum.”
Frank. Maud could almost hear the faint scratching of the tree branch, although now all was silent. A, B, C, D, E, then F.
CHAPTER
6
HOLLYWOOD
1939
“Mrs. Baum?”
The phone rang at Ozcot at ten o’clock on a Thursday morning. The switchboard operator’s nasal voice said, “Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios is on the line. Can you please hold?”
Maud gripped the receiver, frowning in concentration. This was the first time anyone from the studio had gotten in touch with her. Had Louis B. Mayer decided to enlist her help after all?
“Mrs. Baum, this is Mary Smith—I’m the unit publicist for The Wizard of Oz? Can you come over to the lot this morning? We have something we want to show you.”
“Come over to the lot?” Maud tried to suppress the note of enthusiasm that leapt into her voice. She was thrilled to be asked but didn’t want to fawn—she should not need to beg to be involved.
“We’ll send a car,” the woman said.
An hour later, Maud was being driven through the front gates of the studio. This time, the guard behind the glass didn’t stop them at all—just issued a jaunty wave. The car pulled up in front of the sound stage. Inside, the light was dim, and it appeared that they were doing something with costumes. As her eyes adjusted to the light, Maud saw a determined young woman with a mass of blond curls hurrying toward her.
“Mrs. Baum?” she said. “I’m Mary Smith, the one who phoned you? It is such a pleasure to meet you. You must be wondering why we brought you here?”
“Indeed,” Maud said, her tone cool as she studied the young publicist’s overly bright expression. She had not forgotten the repeated snubs that had preceded this morning’s abrupt invitation.
“It’s just that we’ve had the strangest—well, let me just show you,” Mary said. “We’ve found something that we think may be of interest to you….It’s just the gosh-darnedest thing…”
Mary Smith darted away, leaving Maud standing on the set alone—with only a bridge and a wooden wagon. On the side was painted PROFESSOR MARVEL in big gilt letters. Maud could not place this scene in Frank’s book. She had expected to feel elated to finally set foot on the set of The Wizard of Oz. Instead, she felt disoriented, and puzzled about why she was here.
“Here it is,” the publicist clucked. “This is the one!”
Curly-haired Mary had returned, now holding a faded old coat—hanger in one hand, the rest draped over her arm. Evidently, it was a costume of some kind.
Maud groped around in her handbag until she found her glasses, perching them on the end of her nose, but even with sharper vision, she did not see what was special about this garment. It was just an old suit coat with prominent lapels.
“Isn’t it amazing!” the publicist shrilled, clapping her hands together in delight.