LILLY HAD A resounding answer to one question and a list full of mysteries. She was not to go to Prague, but this came from the same voice that had provided a roster of unknowns: George, Francis, London, the tower, and one final addition, hastily scribbled by Madame Eudoxia: Michael. She didn’t know any of these people, and wasn’t the Tower of London the spot where the English kings made people disappear? A place of confinement, of confession, of last nights on earth? Far from a place of refuge, that sounded like the Prague that Josef feared the city would become.
And what was she to do with the boy? She realized now that she should have asked more questions, different questions—that the reason he drew the hand and eye was not so she could ask about staying or going, but so she could find out more about him. This is how you can know me, he was saying. But within moments of receiving her answer, he was overwhelmed by tears. He put his head in his hands and choked out a horrid wail, a cry of pure misery. There was only one place for him and that was the studio, among the wreckage of boxes and her half-packed suitcase. She would be lucky to find a taxi in this part of the city, but though he was slight, she did not think she could carry him all the way home.
THE WORLD’S FAIR
THIS WAS THE MOMENT Peggy would miss the most. Soon, in a line of other girls, she would step to the edge of the pool, wait a beat, and then, with her arms raised, begin her dive. She would feel it all: the spring of her legs, her feet free of the deck, her body flashing through the air, then plunging into the pool, the shock of the water igniting every nerve. She would surface midstroke, the elaborate choreography already under way, as row after row of Aquabelles swam the perimeter of the pool, looped back in braided circuits, and formed stars and flowers with their kicking legs, their bobbing heads, their artfully turned arms.
The Aquacade was the biggest draw in the World’s Fair Amusement Zone. The fair itself might lose money (and it did, by the truckload), but the Aquacade would make a richer man of Billy Rose, master showman and owner of the Diamond Horseshoe, one of the hottest clubs on Broadway. In the weeks before the fair opened, an army of workers had completed a vast grandstand cradling a 250-foot-long swimming pool that stretched from one lofty tower to another. In one of the towers, Vincent Lopez led his orchestra through a peppy mix of popular tunes, while on the other side, daredevil divers and clown acts plummeted into the water below. The headliners were celebrities long before the fair ever started: Johnny Weissmuller, the Tarzan of the silver screen; Eleanor Holm, a champion swimmer better known for getting tossed from the Olympic team for late-night carousing; and a man who never so much as dipped his toe in the water, Morton Downey, the last of the great Irish tenors.
Along with its star power, the Aquacade amazed the masses with its cast-of-hundreds water-ballet revues. The burly Aquadudes were often the first in the pool, but there were no more than twenty of them and—sorry, ladies!—they weren’t the main attraction. It wasn’t until the women entered the water—row upon row of lithe Aquabelles, Aquafemmes, and Aquagals—in peach-toned bathing suits that suggested no suits at all that the audience really began to cheer. Music blared from the bandstand, fountains sprayed in all directions, and the swimmers sliced through the water, shaping curlicues and sunbursts made up of nothing but arms and legs and white-capped heads. For the big finish to one number, the Aquabelles assembled at the far end of the pool and swam its length in rows of six, their heads perfectly aligned, until they disappeared below the bandstand. That always put the crowd into a frenzy, bidding farewell to that abundance of flesh, of smiles, of joy.
If Peggy had told them at the audition that she was getting married in June, they never would have picked her. Five thousand tried out and only five hundred were chosen. Even after she got the job, she kept her engagement a secret. Every day before she left home to catch the bus to the fair, she put her engagement ring in the jewelry box in her bedroom. Until she returned to her parents’ house—to the room where she had grown up—she wasn’t Peggy-who-was-getting-married, she was just Peggy. Some of the girls thought she was stuck-up or standoffish, and one of the Aquadudes had called her a cold fish, but she couldn’t risk blurting out something about the wedding that would get her hauled in front of the bosses. It was fine for Eleanor Holm to be married. She was the biggest name on the marquee, and her mister was none other than Billy Rose himself—until recently Mr. Fanny Brice. But Aquabelles, Aquafemmes, Aquagals, and even the do-nothing Aquamaids? That wasn’t a job for wives. Wives needed to be taking care of the home instead of performing four shows a day, seven days a week, for thousands of cheering, ticket-buying customers.
Peggy’s final day at the Aquacade was supposed to be last week, but she had delayed and delayed and delayed. Don’t think you can climb out of the pool and into your wedding dress, her mother kept telling her. No groom wants a bride who stinks of chlorine.
But what if Peggy wasn’t going to be a bride? What about that?
Peggy had always hated the dreary, boring side of life—the side that her mother and Rosemary said was just life itself. But why did that have to be life? Rosemary lived in a shabby apartment with a landlady with cobweb hair who was always looking over her shoulder. And Rosemary was supposed to be the smart one! That’s what Daddy had always said—and look where it had landed her. Mother and Daddy’s house was nice enough but it was cluttery: the china cabinet was stuffed with plates painted with the Tara brooch and the end tables were crowded with pictures of spooky-eyed relatives dead since before Peggy was born. It was all so old—not just from the past but about the past—and every frame, candy dish, and scrap of Old Country lace needed to be dusted every single day. Peggy didn’t want any of that. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life as a maid or a museum-keeper.