Swimming in the Moon: A Novel (20 page)

A boy ran across the stage with an enormous American flag. A change in the sequence, obviously. Red and blue lights flashed. Drums beat backstage. Catching time with the music, my mother began “The Star-Spangled Banner,” knees lifting slightly in a march, arms stiffly swinging. My heart ached for her frozen face and toy soldier act. What did she care about the rocket’s red glare, the dawn’s early light?

Behind me acrobats were assembling, recalled by Harold and grumbling at the forced reprise. So she’d have just two songs? How many had she sung before? Frantic, I tried to remember. Four? Five?

She took her bow with hoots from the cheaper seats. Elegantly dressed women in the first rows did not clap. The acrobat master barked “Alley-oop” and clapped his hands. The troupe smiled in unison like a single string pulled tight across their faces as they flipped themselves onstage.

Mario was waiting in Mamma’s dressing room. When he held up a red card, her face paled to white. “It’s your second warning, Teresa,” he said severely. “Mr. Keith could turn you out today for unacceptable gestures. You know this. You signed the contract. Vaudeville is a
family
entertainment. Teresa, what were you thinking?”

I moved to her side. “She was singing from opera
,
Mario. She was taken by emotion. It was a dramatic gesture. Please, give her another chance. Where can you find a voice like hers? And the national anthem, have you ever heard it sung so beautifully? Mamma, you won’t do that again, right? Right? You won’t make unacceptable gestures?” She nodded so stiffly that it seemed her neck might creak.

Mario sighed. “Teresa, next time I’ll have to telegraph Mr. Keith. If there’s one more incident,
one
gesture,
one
late entry,
one
more angry word with Lydia about her dogs,
one
more scene about that maestro—”

“Toscanini,” Mamma muttered.

Mario ignored this. “
One
more problem and you’ll be traded to the Loew circuit as a warm-up act to one-reelers. Five shows a day. You’ll share the bill with
movies.
Do you understand?”

“She understands,” I said.

“I’m speaking to Teresa. Do
you
understand, Teresa?”

She nodded. Mario went over some bits of business: new lyrics, changes in staging, a shuffling of songs. When he left, we slumped in chairs, more spent than we ever were after a summer day of cleaning.

“
Do
you understand, Mamma?”

“Yes, yes, of course. Stop talking about it. Let’s go out.”

We walked along Lake Michigan. Against that mass of water she seemed frail and uncertain, tentative in her step. “Vaudeville isn’t what I thought, Lucia. All these rules. Always watching for
him
. And nobody’s kind to me anymore, not even Mario.”

“Mamma, the problem is the way you touched yourself. You know they don’t like it.”

“Americans!” she exploded. “They hate their bodies. They hate women. The churchmen see filth everywhere. Whatever I did, it just happened. It’s not my fault.” Useless to remind her that she practiced every gesture, every crook of the finger and bend of the wrist. Nothing in her performances “just happened.”

“Mamma, I’m worried. Why don’t you come home and rest? I can get a good job. I can’t go to college without a scholarship anyway.”

“No, I’ll stay here. I feel better now. Look.” She pointed to a boulder by the shore. “We’ll sit over there.” In the hour we had before the next show, I told her about Yolanda’s baby, the cameo, and my graduation speech. She held my hand, barely listening. When I had no more news to share, she announced: “Maybe it
was
just a drunk backstage. I’ll keep singing, Lucia. It’s the best thing for me. After all, I
am
the Naples Nightingale.”

“Of course you are. And you’re wonderful.” She sighed as we leaned together. In the next day and a half, there were no incidents, unacceptable gestures, or talk of Toscanini. Mamma didn’t gamble, which annoyed the acrobats who won from her regularly. “You see?” she said. “I’m fine. If they would just treat me well, everything could be easy. Or if you came with me,” she said wistfully.

Mario said there was no possibility of my traveling with the troupe, none. Mr. Keith would not tolerate an unwieldy crowd of spouses, children, lovers, and “others.” He did promise to work harder at enforcing Mr. Keith’s rules against backstage gambling. That in itself might help, for losing made my mother anxious and angry. Perhaps the gestures were only a passing error, an operatic excess. Lying awake in our hotel room, I could think of no better work for her than singing and no better world than vaudeville. If only she could stay.

“I’m fine,” Mamma insisted at the station as I left. “You worry too much, Lucia.” I went back to Cleveland, hovering between hope and helpless worry.

“You did your best,” said Roseanne. “You can’t be her mother forever. The best thing for both of you is work.” Perhaps she was right.

My diploma earned
me a trial post as junior clerk for $11.50 a week at Mr. Kinney’s Dry Goods. I didn’t mention my hope for college, and of course Mr. Kinney had no suspicions. In a stroke, every lesson in geometry, grammar, history, rhetoric, civics, and geography was replaced by principles of shopkeeping, constant reminders and instructions. I must be attentive, he warned, for respectable-seeming customers might slip unpaid-for items into commodious purses. The most trusted employee might take merchandise, sell it at lower rates to friends, or simply give it away for favors.
Loyal
employees,
Mr. Kinney reminded us, could expect due recompense. Others would be fired immediately.

“You’ll work hard,” other clerks warned, “but he does appreciate diligence.” I tried to make myself useful. Sales to Italian customers increased. I grasped the knack of running a sharpened pencil down a list of prices and summing them in my head. I had no talent for artful arrangement of merchandise but could bargain hard with wholesalers. When a dealer from Boston agreed to my price for strong cotton thread and fine steel needles if I bought two cases, I pressed the point on Mr. Kinney. “You’ll see, sir, Italians will appreciate quality.”

“And if not, you’ll buy the overstock yourself, Miss D’Angelo?”

“Yes, sir, of course.”

I began quietly speaking to friends and sisters of friends and those who came for scribing, showing the strength of the thread, the smooth finish and keen point of the Boston needles. “Why buy from your bosses at twice the price and half the quality?” Factory girls hesitated, afraid of fines for dealing outside the company store. “I need my job,” said Yolanda’s cousin Giovanna, who sewed for Printz-Biederman. “
My
mother isn’t a vaudeville star.”

“I work too,” I reminded her. “And I can help you, if you want.”

Giovanna’s shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry, Lucia. We just have to be careful.” With some trouble, I had Roseanne, Donato’s wife, and two of her friends buy needles and thread and sell them at cost to the factory girls.

“Strange,” Mr. Kinney mused. “Italians buy my needles and thread, but no yard goods. Why is that, Miss D’Angelo?”

“You know how they are, sir. Yard goods cost more, so they deal in Italian stores, where they can bargain.”

He was pleased, though, for the shipment sold quickly. He began asking my advice on other goods and pricing and soon raised my salary to twelve dollars a week. With the few dollars I still got from Mamma and scribing money, I could even save a little. I felt useful and clever, helping my friends and furthering my own ends.

Then Giovanna was fined for using outside materials. Someone had seen needles in her purse. When she protested that Printz-Biederman was profiting from workers, she was fined for speaking socialism. Coming in late one morning after nursing her mother’s raging fever all night, she was fined again.

“It’s not your fault, Lucia,” Roseanne insisted. But the first two fines
were
my fault: my thread, my words, my clumsy maneuvering without considering what consequences others would shoulder. In that summer and fall of 1908, I brooded on my mother’s brittle moods that I couldn’t ease and workplace injustices I couldn’t heal. I longed to go to college and learn to be of greater good—or at least less harm.

I went to see Miss Miller, now Mrs. Richard Livingston. Married and settled in her husband’s grand home, she might have money of her own, or at least some claim on his. She met me in the marble entryway. In a pearl-gray morning dress, tightly pleated and overworked with embroidery, she took little bird steps, anxiously looking around. Where was the assured, driving presence that staged a lively talent show at Hiram House?

“This house is a present from my father-in-law. Limestone money,” she announced, indicating the marble, gilt, brocade, carved woods, and crystal, all even finer than her family’s magnificent furnishings. “
Everything
comes from him,” she whispered, “and I am to be grateful. He lives with us. He watches us. He was never like this before, Richard says, never. Now he’s convinced he’ll die in the poorhouse, that I’ll ruin him with ten-cent tips to the butcher boy or a birthday present to the scullery maid. Look around, Lucia. Is that possible?”

“No, I don’t think so, Mrs. Livingston,” I said obediently, already fearing my mission was hopeless.

“Let’s talk in the sitting room.
His
servants are cleaning upstairs.”

We sat on a delicate French divan. “It never hurts to ask,” Miriam had said. I had come to ask. I had to ask. I poured out my longing for college and joy in reading, the pleasures of school and skipping grades, my first sight of an American college. “I know not many Italian girls go, but I
could
do it, Mrs. Livingston. I’m sure I could.”

She sighed. “I’d love to help, Lucia. You were made for college. But
he
”—she jerked her head toward the grand stairway with such force that the puffed pompadour shook—“put us on a ‘charity budget.’ We gave to the new park in Shaker Heights. I’m afraid to ask him for another cause.” She leaned toward me. “Richard won’t have his own money until the old man dies. I’m so sorry.” She did seem sorrowful, deflated as a child. When she offered streetcar fare from a tiny dangling purse, I refused. “I’ll tell Richard you stopped by. He heard you’re working for Mr. Kinney. It’s a fine post for you. Congratulations. I’ll be sure to tell Agnes.” She leaned forward. “At least the old man let me bring her with me.” There was little more to say. I thanked her and left. Walking between rows of mansions set in velvet lawns, my shoes beat out “No college. No college. No college.” Father Stephen was right. All I could do now was to make the best of my work.

At least that fall was splendid, with bright blazes of leaves and balmy days deep into October. I pried my face into smiles when customers said how fortunate we were with the weather. “Yes, we certainly are, ma’am.”

Not everyone was fortunate that season. Giovanna was fired from Printz-Biederman. Now the best she could find was a place in a dusty, wood-framed workshop behind Kinney’s where Mr. Lentz contracted with wholesalers for piecework: cutting patterns, sewing bodice fronts and backs, and making sleeves. Giovanna earned less for this rough work and had to lease her machine from Mr. Lentz. Her mother was bedridden now; her ten-year-old brother got five dollars a week as a messenger boy. I offered to make up her difference in salary.

“That’s charity, Lucia. I can’t take it.” Only Yolanda could help, for she was family; she sent a dollar a week. I was ashamed for my part in her troubles and seethed with anger at Printz-Biederman’s rules and greedy fines.

Just after New
Year’s in 1909, Mario wrote: “I’m sorry, Lucia. We may be a family, but we can’t be nursemaids. Your mother needed more attention than we could give. Mr. Keith had to let her go.” I never knew why. Months later, a passing statement, “They didn’t like my hands,” made me think she had repeated the “unacceptable gestures.”

There had been some kindness, I’m sure arranged by Mario. She might have been turned out on the street in a small midwestern town. Instead, she was kept on until St. Louis and traded to Mr. Marcus Loew’s People’s Vaudeville Company in return for a juggler. Exactly as Mario had warned, Mamma’s beautiful voice would introduce one-reel motion pictures of chase scenes, cowboys and Indians, and newsreels of Chinese mandarins, Indian rajas on decorated elephants, and the pomp of Russian czars. To lure vaudeville lovers, Mr. Loew provided a few singers and comics, perhaps a mimic for his shows, easy acts to pack and move.

If she got good reports from Loew’s, Mario wrote, Mr. Keith
might
take my mother back. But with new acts auditioning in each city, why reclaim a problem? Questions flew at me. How would she fare with the castoffs of vaudeville houses? How long would Mr. Loew even keep live acts? Moving pictures didn’t need to be housed, dressed, and fed. They didn’t jockey for better billings or higher wages. If she failed with Loew’s, what then? Mamma hadn’t confessed her situation, so how could I comfort her? I didn’t even know where she was. Frantic letters to Mr. Loew went unanswered. A theater manager in Cleveland said “New York” arranged performers’ itineraries; he had no idea how to find the Naples Nightingale. All I could do was wait for her next postcard. “Bad things come in threes,” Roseanne was fond of saying, as when three boarders in sequence stole from her and slipped away at night.

In Mr. Lentz’s shop, where Giovanna worked, girls sat surrounded by stacks of unfinished garment pieces. The air was thick with snips and fluff of thread and fabric. Even foremen couldn’t smoke; the risk was too great. There were so many fires and causes for fires in those days: a hobnail shoe striking an iron plate, a cracked electrical wire, or wadded oily rag set in a sunny window.

In a March mid-afternoon as I was finishing an inventory, someone screamed into the store: “Fire in Lentz’s, right behind you!”

I raced toward the workshop, shouting at the girls who got out first. “Giovanna Fidelli, have you seen her?” Dazed, they shook their heads. Perhaps they couldn’t hear me amid shrieks and sirens, fire bells and shouts of policemen pouring into the alley, pressing back the gathering crowd. Smoke billowed from the doors and windows as dark shapes of girls appeared, staggering, some trailing streams of flames.