Fleurette came to believe that her childhood had been wasted. She’d been schooled at home and taught such useless subjects as grammar and arithmetic, with music and dance treated as secondary to her education.
Surely May Ward’s chorus girls hadn’t suffered such a pedestrian upbringing. One could tell by looking at them that they didn’t sleep on horsehair mattresses, or sit down at night to a dismal supper of cabbage and potatoes, or go around in an old duster on Mondays, picking up after themselves. They seemed to have alighted from some remote and exotic island, peopled only by long-limbed girls in satin slippers. Why hadn’t Fleurette been given admittance to their world already? She felt a pang of regret at what she’d missed. She was now desperate to make up for the time lost.
The audition provided exactly the opportunity she needed. While the other girls chose pretty frocks and songs they’d performed many times on stage already, Fleurette recruited a small ensemble of half a dozen girls, choreographed a clever dance, and chose a song and a way of presenting it that was entirely outside the confines of Mrs. Hansen’s prosaic imagination. She rehearsed it everywhere: in the barn, in the meadow behind the house, in her bedroom when everyone else was away, and in the empty dance studio at Mrs. Hansen’s Academy, anytime it wasn’t in use. Only she and Helen had dance steps to rehearse, as nothing was required of the rest of her cast but walk-on roles. This they had also accomplished in secret, swearing each girl to secrecy. Everything about their performance was to be a surprise—and so much more than that.
Fleurette felt sure that May Ward would see it as a revelation. She wouldn’t be expecting such polish and sophistication on a stage in Paterson. She would demand to know Fleurette’s name. She would write it down and take care to spell it correctly (Fleurette hated to see her name misspelled), and would ask to see her after. She would invite her to the join the chorus without delay. Fleurette would become her protégée. She imagined the two of them spending their afternoons together in empty theaters, where May Ward would teach her everything she’d failed to learn in Paterson.
“You’re ready for New York,” May Ward would tell her, panting after some particularly vexing dance steps one afternoon. “Get some rest. We leave tomorrow.”
But she wouldn’t rest. She would be tireless. Some other Dresden Doll would probably lose her place to make room for Fleurette, but that couldn’t be helped. The theater business was ruthless that way. Fleurette already felt a little world-weary as she thought of the constant striving and the endless jostling for position that would characterize her new life. It would never be easy, her stage career, but it would be the only life for her.
And tonight it would begin.
CONSTANCE ARRIVED LATE to the audition and rushed to take her seat alongside Norma. She was surprised to see the theater nearly full: usually the families of the students didn’t occupy half the place.
“Why are there so many people here? Is May Ward expected to perform?” she whispered.
“If she doesn’t, we’ll have a riot,” Norma said.
A few piano notes from behind the stage curtains brought the audience to silence, and then to applause. Constance didn’t recognize the melody and the piano cut off abruptly before the song could begin. After some deliberately awkward fumbling with the curtain, a tall man in a smart suit and a high silk hat took the stage.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” he called. “So good of you to come see me!”
That got a groan and a few cheers. He looked around in mock surprise.
“What, you didn’t buy tickets to get a look at Freeman Bernstein, manager of vaudeville’s most famous girl act?”
“Then it is him,” Norma said grimly, as if his appearance confirmed everything she’d suspected of him.
There were more jeers. A few small cabbages pelted the stage—obviously planted—which Mr. Bernstein dodged gracefully, to the delight of the crowd.
“Hey, now! Do you mean to say you didn’t line up around the block for old Freeman Bernstein, husband and manager of the renowned comedienne May Ward?”
He ducked this time and peered out anxiously from behind his hat to make sure there were no raw eggs forthcoming. Now the audience whistled and shouted and demanded May Ward.
He put out his hands to silence the crowd. “Now, you know Mrs. Bernstein—excuse me, she’ll punch me if I don’t call her Mrs. Ward—you know that my wife has a very important job today, and that is to see for herself the talent here in Paterson, and to decide if there’s a girl in this town who’s ready to join her on the stage. What do you think about that, folks? Are we going to find our next Dresden Doll today?”
There came another roar from the crowd and then, without any further preliminary, May Ward strolled on stage with the light, rhythmic stride of a dancer. She held her arms out in that peculiar way that performers have. When Mr. Bernstein took her hand, she gave a graceful twirl that raised her pink skirts and showed her kid slippers, along with quite a bit more. Norma grunted as May Ward’s knees—clad in white stockings—were revealed to an appreciative audience.
Constance elbowed Norma in the ribs. “She’s only dancing.”
“We used to know how to dance and keep our skirts down at the same time,” Norma said, without taking her eyes off Mrs. Ward.
“I don’t recall you ever knowing how to dance. I’m sure they’re to be judged on their abilities, and nothing more.”
“They’re to be judged on their ability to pay the five dollars. You still haven’t admitted to giving her the money.”
Constance pretended not to hear and leaned forward to get a better look at May Ward. She had always seemed, in the pictures Fleurette had pinned to her wall, to be a surprisingly ordinary-looking woman: fair-skinned and fine-featured, with thin lips, a frail nose, and eyes neither large nor expressive. With a good deal of paint on her face, anyone could be made to look striking, and Mrs. Ward did indeed look striking on stage. Her eyebrows were penciled into a state of comic curiosity. Her lips were stained a loud strawberry red. When she fluttered her eyelashes, they could not only be seen but counted from the back row. Every gesture she made—every turn of her wrist, every lift of her chin—had an air of theatricality about it calculated to make the audience understand that she was not at all like the rest of them.
As the applause died down, Mr. Bernstein turned to the pianist and said, “Jerry, do you think we can make this bird sing a few notes?”
The pianist resumed the song he’d begun earlier. May Ward pretended to protest and wave him away, but then she did give a verse, taking up a coquettish pose and singing in what was meant to be her good-girl voice.
There’s a little bit of bad in every good little girl
They’re not to blame
Though they may seem like little angels in a dream,
They’re naughty just the same.
They read the good book Sunday
And snappy stories Monday
There’s a little bit of bad in every good little girl
They’re all the same.