Once it was finished and returned to Mrs. Ward (“toss it anywhere,” the actress had groaned, having not yet recovered from a wild night, but Fleurette couldn’t toss it anywhere, and hung it on a fabric-covered hanger she’d improvised with a pillowcase)—once she was finished with that, she had a mountain of costumes waiting for her. The decision to keep Fleurette on for the rest of the tour had led the Dolls to raid their trunks once again, and to pull out their most-hated costumes for a complete renovation.
“I look like a shepherdess in this dress,” Roberta complained, about her shepherdess costume, and the others agreed. “If only you could take out every single ruffle and make it more of a city girl’s dress, we won’t look like such children. Make them look like that dress of May’s you were showing us.”
“That dress of May’s came from one of the very best houses in Paris,” Fleurette said. “There’s no way to make something like it without?—”
“You’ll think of something,” Eliza put in. And the entire troupe—all eight of them—deposited their ridiculous and cheaply made costumes with Fleurette, who had no choice but to take one apart to see what, if anything, could be made from it. She had one night to finish the work: the Dolls had persuaded Mrs. Ward to let them skip a costume change so that they might all have new dresses at once for the following evening’s performance.
By five o’clock, she had one of the dresses taken apart and pinned back together. The Dolls popped back in before leaving for the theater and heaped praise on the new design, which was thoroughly modern, with a daring hemline and a low waist, but still slightly pleated so the skirts would move when they danced.
“It’s just perfect,” Roberta declared. “Can you do all of them tonight? May hates to skip a costume change. If you can’t do them in one night, don’t do them at all.”
Fleurette promised to try, although it seemed impossible. The way to go about it was to take all the dresses apart, spread them out in a row, then put each one back together in precisely the same manner. First she’d cut away the petticoats, then she’d stitch in a new band around the waist from some of the old petticoat material—such a cheap and telling way to drop a waist, but the audience wouldn’t notice—and then she’d put the skirts back on, giving each one a few even pleats. Something had to be done about the sleeves as well, but she’d save that for last.
It was a dull job, once she knew how to do it. For the rest of the evening, she worked in silence and solitude. The drudgery of her time with the company had started to tell on Fleurette. She felt diminished by the long hours in a dim and stuffy room, especially as that room was entirely unsuited to the kind of work she needed to do. She had no work-table, no iron, poor lighting, and no proper mount for her machine.
The Dolls treated her more like a servant than a compatriot. They hadn’t seen her act back in Paterson and knew nothing of her theatrical ambitions, as she so rarely had a chance to tell anyone about them. She’d expected to be with them all the time: out about town during the day, and at the theater every night. She’d imagined herself backstage, helping with costume changes and perhaps working out new dance steps alongside them, not left alone in a hotel room with more work than she could possibly finish.
For the first time, she allowed herself to feel a little sorry over her predicament, and just the slightest bit homesick. She hadn’t realized it, but she had a certain shorthand with her sisters that no one else seemed to understand. Anytime she tried to say something cutting or clever to one of the Dolls, she’d be greeted with confused stares. And no one was the least bit interested in indulging her, or looking after her, or seeing to her comfort in any way. Her cot was creaky and flimsy. The only food she could afford—train station sandwiches and tea and toast at the hotel—was bland and dispiriting.
She gave in to her misery and recounted every single thing she missed: her bed, her hot baths, her sewing room, her pleasant afternoon job at Mrs. Hansen’s, the company of Helen and the other girls, and even her sisters. Her old life, which had once seemed so weighty and oppressive, now felt rich and warm and familiar. It rushed back at her like a dream and Fleurette, already so tired and bleary-eyed from her work, found herself blinking back tears.
But that wasn’t to be the worst of it. She was halfway finished—every dress taken apart, every one of them missing its skirt—when she heard a popping sound, smelled smoke, and looked down to see an orange flame flicker to life and then expire along the fabric-wrapped electrical cord of her sewing machine.
48
THE THEATER WAS OVERFULL. It had warmed so quickly that women were already fanning themselves with their programs and men were putting fingers under their collars. There was an air of whiskey and merriment in the audience, and a thrilling undercurrent of anticipation.
The lights went down and May Ward stepped out in front of the curtain to the ravenous applause of the audience. She wore an old-fashioned dancing frock buoyed by so many frothy layers of petticoats that it seemed to bounce around on its own. On her head was an elaborate poke bonnet trimmed with an arrangement of silk flowers, feathers, and bows. She stood perfectly upright, but the bonnet swayed precariously.
The pianist played a little melody, and people started laughing and clapping before a word came out of Mrs. Ward’s mouth. Constance didn’t recognize the song until another girl, presumably one of her Dresden Dolls, flitted across the stage with an enormous stuffed canary attached to a stick. The bird came to rest in the very center of May Ward’s bonnet.
Norma slumped down into her seat and put a hand over her eyes.
“You’re the one who insisted we come all the way to Harrisburg to see this,” Constance whispered.
“We came to find Fleurette. I’d hoped never to hear this song again,” Norma said.
Norma had banished the song from the house at the height of its popularity a few years ago. Fleurette used to sing it all day long, and would beg one or the other of them to take the bird’s part. They both refused, although they knew the lines by heart.
Here it came, whether they wanted it or not. The pianist gave his cue and May Ward sang:
On Nellie’s little hat, there was a little bird,
That little bird knew lots of things, it did upon my word;
And in its quiet way, it had a lot to say.
As the lovers strolled along;
May Ward was possessed of a bright and clear voice that rang out like a bell. She embellished every line with a theatrical trill. As she began to skip around in a pantomime of a lady out for a walk with a man, the other girl scampered along behind her, making sure the bird bounced jovially up and down on her hat. She plunged into the second verse:
To Nellie, Willie whispered as they fondly kissed,
“I’ll bet you were never kissed like that!”
The girl made the bird flutter on its stick and sang, in her best imitation of a bird’s voice,
“Well he don’t know Nellie like I do!”
Said the saucy little bird on Nellie’s hat.