“Oh, my little hunchback can certainly sing! Come over and give Daddy a hug,” he said.
She slowly uncoiled from her stool, unveiling a glimpse of the woman she would soon become; then, younger again, she rushed toward him, flinging her arms around the short man, so that she knocked his glasses askew. Maud watched the spectacle uncomfortably. The girl looked to be at least fifteen and was surely too old to be quite so affectionate to a grown man. Who wasn’t her father.
“And the song?” the piano player interjected.
Mayer dropped his embrace of the young actress and turned to the fellow at the piano as Judy, suddenly subdued, slunk back to her perch on the stool.
“Perfect. Excellent. Very good. Everything she sings is perfect.”
“I think the song isn’t quite right,” Maud said.
Mayer turned and stared at her, as if he had forgotten she was there.
“Perhaps just a little bit faster next time,” Mayer said.
“Not faster,” Maud said, annoyed that her voice had emerged like a mouse’s soft squeak. She cleared her throat. She had never had trouble speaking her mind—but the devil of old age was that sometimes she sounded frail when she didn’t feel it in the least.
“The song,” Maud said. “Where exactly did you say it came from?”
“Where exactly, didja say?” The piano man stood from the bench and crossed the stage, shading his eyes and peering into the darkness. “I can tell you where. I was in the car, idling at the corner of Sunset and Laurel, right in front of Schwab’s…”
Maud was instantly intrigued. “Go on.”
“That’s where it came from…popped right into my mind. I scribbled a few bars on a receipt—right there on the dashboard of my car—and as soon as the light changed, I rushed back to the studio.”
“Sunset and Laurel?” Maud said. “That’s the last trolley stop.”
“With all due respect, there’s no trolley there,” the man with the pencil behind his ear said. “The Garden of Allah Hotel is on that corner. Never seen a trolley near there.”
“I’m quite aware there is no trolley there now. I’m speaking of the year 1910. My husband and I got off the trolley there on our first visit to Hollywood.” An image of Frank rose up in front of Maud: his dust-covered white spats, crumpled gray suit, and the impressive fountain of his brown moustache as he stepped off the trolley car, onto a dirt road surrounded by orange groves, and crowed, “So this is Hollywood!”
The girl turned and stared, blinking into the dark. “Who are you?”
“Oh, we have a visitor from the Land of Oz itself—this is Mrs. Maud Baum. Her husband wrote the book,” Mayer said. “Mrs. Baum, meet Judy Garland. She is going to be a huge star!”
“My late husband wrote the book,” Maud corrected, the vivid momentary vision of Frank already fading.
“And, of course, being the widow of a man who wrote a book does not give you the slightest expertise in music,” the piano man muttered, just loud enough for Maud to hear.
But the girl seemed interested. “Why? Why do you say the song is not right?” Judy stood up from her stool and walked to the edge of the stage, peering into the shadowy hall.
“Well…” Maud breathed in slowly to calm herself, collecting her thoughts. “It’s lovely, it’s just…something about the manner. There’s not enough wanting in it.”
“Not enough wanting?” the piano man said. “That’s preposterous.” He played a few bars, heavy on the pedal, for emphasis.
But the girl was listening. Maud could tell.
“Have you ever seen something that you wanted more than anything, but you knew you couldn’t have it? Have you ever pressed your nose right up to a plate-glass window and seen the very thing you’re longing for—so close you could reach out and touch it, and yet you know you will never have it?”
The girl’s eyes narrowed. A faint blush crept along her cheekbones, and one corner of her mouth tugged down. She twirled a lock of hair around her finger.
“Sing it like that.”
Maud studied the girl’s expression. Would this girl, this would-be Dorothy, understand? Could she understand?
“She can sing it however you want!” a woman’s voice called out from the shadows behind the stage. “Just say it, and she’ll do it. Do what the lady says, Baby. Sing it with more wanting.”
The girl’s forehead puckered, and her mouth pinched into a pout. She whirled around and hissed, loud enough for Maud to hear, “Be quiet, Mother! I’m trying to listen to the lady.”
“Just trying to help,” her mother stage-whispered back.
Maud could now make out a middle-aged woman wearing a pink blouse and white pedal pushers, standing in the shadows at the side of the stage.
“Pardon me, ma’am,” the fellow with the pencil behind his ear said to Maud. “What was it you were saying? I’m Yip Harburg, lyricist. I wanted to hear what else you had to say.” The pencil man had a shock of dark hair, and the warm flash in his brown eyes was visible behind his spectacles.
“Well, about the words…” Maud said softly. “When she sings ‘I’ll go over the rainbow,’ isn’t that a bit too certain?”
“Too certain?” Harburg said. “I’m not sure I follow.”
“Shouldn’t a song about a rainbow have a little more doubt in it?” Maud said, starting tentatively but getting a little louder as she spoke. “Just because you can see a rainbow doesn’t mean you know how to get to the other side. Think about it. That pot of gold—you can’t ever see it, right? You have to take it on faith.”
The pencil man nodded, then slipped the orange stub from behind his ear and scratched a few words on his pad of paper. “You know, I hadn’t thought of it quite like that, but you could be on to something.”
Maud turned back to the girl, to see if she understood, but the girl’s mother now stood next to her on the stage, fussing with her hair and whispering to her in an agitated hush.
Louis B. Mayer clapped his hands twice. “Splendid! Splendid! We must be going. Keep working on it. Just continue to do as you do….Don’t you worry, Mrs. Baum. Chances are this song won’t even make it to the final cut. No reason to think about it now.”
Mayer put his arm through Maud’s, directing her toward the door. As he hustled her out into the bustling alley, Maud craned her neck, trying to catch a last glimpse of the girl as the heavy sound stage door swung shut behind them.
“L.B….!” someone was shouting.
“A moment, please!” Mayer said, then hurried away from Maud without even saying goodbye, leaving her alone in the crowded alley.
“But, Mr. Mayer!” Maud called out to his receding back.
“Come around whenever you like!” he called out to her. “Just don’t get in the way.”
Maud headed home, feeling unsettled. She’d known from the moment she’d seen Judy that she was too old to play Dorothy, who was but a girl in pigtails, forever young. But that soaring voice…somehow this girl, a stranger to Maud, had conveyed exactly what it felt like to be just spreading her wings, waiting to fly. Even now, in her eighth decade, Maud had not forgotten those complicated emotions: the desire to escape, to get away, to grow up—the fate of every girl.
Every girl except Dorothy.
Something had pierced Maud deep down. Was it the girl? Or was it the song, whose odd melody had burrowed into her ear and now seemed to play in the background? She drove home unable to forget the tune’s haunting effect, like a Broadway overture teasing at what was to come.
CHAPTER
3
FAYETTEVILLE, NEW YORK
1871