One verse was all they were meant to hear, to the raucous displeasure of the audience. As everyone around them cheered and stomped their feet, Freeman Bernstein took his wife’s hand and raised it high. His jacket fell open, revealing a red-and-white-striped vest.
“Now, you know we’d take every girl in this theater with us if we could!” Mr. Bernstein bellowed. “But there’s only room for one more Dresden Doll, and I just know we’re going to find her tonight. What do you say, Mrs. Ward? Shall we give them an audition?”
16
A LITTLE BIT OF BAD in every good little girl? It could have been Constance’s personal anthem. Sorting the good from the bad had become her main occupation of late. Even as she tried to take her mind off her work and give her attention to the auditions, she couldn’t help but scrutinize each girl and wonder what might someday become of her.
A cherub-faced creature with ringlets of curls in a halo around her face sang “Daddy Has a Sweetheart and Mother Is Her Name” in a voice that had obviously received much adoration in her mother’s parlor and always would. A lanky girl decked out in a motoring costume tried to put some sauce into “Keep Away from the Fellow Who Owns an Automobile,” but it came across as shrill and condemning, which met with much approval from the parents in the audience. One aspiring actress dared to step out in a bathing costume (an old-fashioned one, the kind with the heavy skirt and the woolen stockings) to sing “By the Beautiful Sea,” and Constance just knew that she longed to roll off those stockings and show her beautiful legs but didn’t dare. Another attempted “In the Heart of the City That Has No Heart,” but she sang it so cheerily that it lost its sense of the melodramatic, and there seemed no danger of the city ever showing this particular girl how heartless it could be.
But when Fleurette took the stage, both Constance and Norma squirmed in their seats. It was obvious that something unusual, and possibly scandalous, was about to take place, and that it would have the Kopp name attached to it.
Fleurette skipped out in an elaborate ruffled gown, with an enormous satin bonnet on her head and a pink silk poppy behind her ear. Helen Stewart ran out after her, costumed in a man’s baggy suit, her thumbs tucked into suspenders and a top hat nearly covering her eyes. Above her lips she had painted on a black mustache, and she kept a pipe tucked between her teeth.
It was the very picture of practiced vaudeville. When Helen turned to the audience and doffed her hat at them, her red hair came tumbling down around her shoulders. A roar of laughter was her reward. She straightened her tie and took the first verse.
I’m a pushing young man that’s been pushed
My heart has been cannoned and crushed
I’ve heard about some people falling in love
Ah, but I didn’t fall, I was pushed.
Fleurette gave Helen a shove that sent the girl tumbling backwards and scrambling for her hat with the comedic exaggeration of a veteran showman.
Helen tried to stand up, but got only as far as her knees before Fleurette leaned an elbow on the top of her head and took the chorus, singing in the mock accent of a working-class city girl.
I pushed him into the parlour
Pushed the parlour door
Pushed myself upon his knee
Helen fought her way back to her feet and sang in a deep voice, hands on hips:
Pushed her kisser in front of me!
By now the audience was roaring and clapping and stamping their feet. Never had a crowd gone wild for such a silly song before, but then again, they’d never seen it done quite like this.
Fleurette took Helen’s hand and dragged her around the stage. Two young actresses stepped out into the lights, dressed according to their professions: first a jeweler with a monocle and a pile of costume jewels on a pillow, and then a minister in a black collar. Both girls were greeted with more laughter for their convincing masculine costumes.
Helen reached a hand out to the audience as if begging for help, and sang in an ever more frantic voice as Fleurette pulled her around.
She pushed me round to the jewelers
Near the Hippodrome
Pushed me in front of the clergyman
And then she pushed me home.
Constance could hardly hear the rest of it for all the applause showered upon poor beleaguered Helen, with her empty wine bottle and the rent past due. Even Norma shook all over and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. When Helen sang, “I now push three kids in a pram” and wheeled out an enormous pram with three girls inside, their legs kicking, everyone in the theater was on their feet, and Helen and Fleurette took their bows together.
A few more performances followed, but they were light and frothy and quick to dissipate, like meringue. Constance hardly noticed them, so stunned was she by what she’d seen. Fleurette had only ever taken part in ensemble performances before. She’d sung a few solos, but she’d never taken command of the stage like that.
The youngest Kopp, Constance saw all at once, was becoming someone else entirely. She had ideas Constance never heard about, ambitions that exceeded her grasp, and friendships she wasn’t a party to. Fleurette thought of jokes but laughed about them with someone else. She was inventing a different version of herself, one Constance had no part in.
She had to take herself quite firmly in hand at that moment. Let Fleurette make herself unrecognizable to the very people who made her, she told herself. Isn’t that what she’s supposed to do? Isn’t that what we all do?
17
BACKSTAGE, THE AIR WAS ELECTRIC. Young actresses came running off after their final call, so giddy that they couldn’t stop and had to dance around in a circle. The unmistakable fragrance of the theater rose up in their wake: waxy face paint and curling cream, rice powder and stolen cigarettes, and an undercurrent of nervous sweat.
Helen and Fleurette found themselves in the middle of the commotion, accepting squeals of laughter and congratulation from all sides. Fleurette pressed palms and held her cheek out to be kissed, and patted at her hair to ensure the integrity of its elaborate arrangement—but she never took her eyes off the stage door.
When the door finally opened, and May Ward breezed in, followed by her husband, Fleurette lifted her head and inhaled an enormous draft of air in an effort to calm herself. She tried to remember to be modest and grateful, and to introduce Helen right away, and to call out to the other members of their small ensemble in the way a true professional would.