Chapter Nineteen
1900
Woman on Fire
After a final show in New York, an empty road stretched out ahead of us. Not the right kind of road, to say the least. Emptiness, loneliness, poverty, and worse, no bookings. The business lived and died on bookings. Every single person in the company could tell you of a case where that was literally true. Everyone knew someone whose act fell apart when they couldn’t get booked, ended up in the poorhouse, and then one way or another—starvation, illegal behavior, bad company—met an untimely demise.
I didn’t want to become one of those people. But I didn’t know how I would go forward, how I would forge a new life. I didn’t want to give up the nightly ritual of applause, which had become like air to me. I needed to be onstage. Perhaps I could find another job dancing on Broadway, but I wouldn’t be content in the fourth row of four anymore, and I was older now than the average chorus girl. I had turned seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, all without fanfare. If I couldn’t perform, I might be driven back to service, but that was also a poor answer. My skills onstage were unusual, maybe even unique; I was far less remarkable in a parlor or a laundry room. Given all this, I sank into a sadness. I knew a happy ending wasn’t the only kind of ending I might have.
***
We returned to New York for Adelaide’s last show. The city had changed in the years I’d been gone. Where there used to be a reservoir on Forty-Second Street, now they were building a great, huge marble palace. I couldn’t tell what it was going to be, but it was going to be grand. A new terminal for the Grand Central Railroad was also under construction, and there were so many electric lights that the city seemed to glow at night in every direction. There was more of everything. I found it just as overwhelming as I had when I rode into the city for the first time, yet the energy was undeniable, and I could understand why people gravitated toward this place.
Our last show, at the Casino on Broadway at West Thirty-Ninth, was a celebration. Adelaide seemed to regain all that she had lost, just for the night. It was beautiful. The crowd was our happiest crowd, and our peaks were our highest peaks. Our magic was flawless, our dances magnificent, our music enchanting. Adelaide was generous and beautiful and impressive. The audience clapped for us, appreciated us, loved us.
We closed the show with the Navajo Fire. It was not our most elaborate illusion, but it always pleased the crowd. There were five of us dancers in buckskin fringe with feathers on our heads, but we looked like a lot more, whirling in a circle with long scarves. We pantomimed capturing Adelaide and tying her to a tree then danced around her in celebration, whooping and stomping. But we, foolish tribesmen, hadn’t reckoned on her magic. She got one arm free and raised it. All she needed to do was snap her fingers, and the dancing Indian nearest her vanished in a plume of fire, leaving nothing but smoke. We danced on, seeming not to notice, until she snapped her fingers again and another of us disappeared. By then it was too late: snap, snap, snap; gone, gone, gone. At the end, Adelaide stood alone. Usually, she clapped her hands and the rope holding her to the tree fell away, freeing her in a flash, and she strode out to the apron of the stage to do either the second sight act or one final card flourish to close the show. But this last night, instead, she snapped her fingers a sixth time, and she too became fire and then smoke, and she too disappeared.
The audience’s thundering applause in the dark was the loudest, most welcome sound in the world.
Everyone dispersed afterward, almost immediately. No one even lingered to say good-bye. But I knew where Adelaide would be, in her railcar. It was parked in the Grand Central yard for the night. And when I knocked on the door, she answered and poured me a brandy just like hers, halfway up the glass.
“Where will you go?” I asked.
“I’m moving out to a farm on Long Island,” she said. “No more road. No more travel. None of this.”
I began to cry.
“Stop that,” she said. “If you let this be the end for you, you’re not the girl I think you are.”
“I just want one night to be sad.”
“A night’s too much,” she replied. “You have three minutes.”
For three minutes, we sat in silence, sipping our brandy. The artwork on the wall was familiar enough now that I felt the painted ladies and gentlemen were my good friends. It seemed I would never see their faces again.
She flipped open her pocket watch, which had been Alexander’s, and said, “Time’s up. How do you feel?”
“Not sad anymore,” I lied.
“Good.”
I sipped my brandy again.
“Because I have something I want to tell you,” said Adelaide.
“Yes?”
“Vivi, I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you,” I said, trying hard not to cry again and failing.
“Oh, toughen up. It’s not the end of the world.”
“It’s the end of my world,” I said.
“And you don’t think it’s the end of mine? I’ve been at this a lot longer than you. I’ve lost a lot more than you’ve lost.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I understand, chérie,” she said gently. “You’re young. When you’re older, you’ll understand. Life is long. If you’re lucky. You never know what it will bring.”
I replied, “So you think there could be other things as wonderful as working in your show?”
“For you? Absolutely.”
“Such as?”
Raising her glass, she said, “Working in your own show.”
“I don’t think I’m ready,” I said.
“You’re ready.”
“But I’m not like you,” I said. “I’m not strong enough. I can’t fake it. I can’t build a world out of nothing.”
“You don’t have to. You’ve already got it.”
“I’ve got a fat goose egg,” I said, frustrated.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “Listen to what I’m saying. I’m giving it to you.”
“What?”
“I’m not proposing you make something out of nothing. I’m proposing you take over what’s already here. I’m handing the company over to you.”
It was starting to sink in. I was overwhelmed. “Truly?”
“Close your mouth. You’ll catch flies,” she said. “Honestly. You’re smart enough, Vivi. I assumed you’d thought of this.”
“I didn’t,” I said, but I realized I should have. I’d been too busy mourning our demise without stopping to check first if we were dead. Adelaide leaving the business didn’t mean the show couldn’t go on. Not if someone else was willing to step up and be Adelaide.
And she wanted that person to be me.
“No guarantees,” she said. “If things fall apart, things fall apart. I won’t come to rescue you. If your employees desert and your animals escape and the audiences throw horse apples on the stage, that’s your own problem, not mine.”
“I understand.”
She said, “I’m doing the best I can for you. You can have the sets, the illusions, the whole noodle. In return, I want a cut. Twenty percent.”
“I’ll give you ten,” I answered quickly.
She roared with laughter, wiped her mouth, and said, “That’s adorable. I’ll take twenty.”
“Thank you. I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything. Just make good at the box office and keep me happily retired.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Oh,” she said. “One other condition.”
“What’s that?”