American Dreams (9 page)

'I'll admit your papa is a complicated man. Difficult to live with sometimes.'

'Difficult?

The word is impossible. I should have left months ago, as soon as he recovered.'

'Is there nothing I can do to change your mind?'

'Nothing. Carl's taking me to the depot, you won't have to bother.'

'Bother? You are my child, my only girl.'

'Well, don't worry, your only girl will be fine in New York City.' Fritzi said it with much more confidence than she felt. She yanked the leather bag open and folded a skirt into the bottom, lined with buff-colored leather.

lisa dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. 'I have gifts for you.'

'Mine are under the tree. There's a plaid muffler for Papa, I'm sure he'll burn it or throw it in the trash.'

'You judge him too severely' ,

'I don't think so.'

'You must take your presents. Wait.'

Fritzi went on packing. Moments later lisa returned with two white boxes, a large one imprinted with the name of the Fair Store and a smaller one, about six inches square, from Field's.

'Here, open them. Please.'

Giving her mother a look that mingled affection and melancholy, Fritzi pulled the red ribbon off the larger box, unfolded the tissue paper.

'Oh, Mama, how handsome.'

'A winter coat. You need a new heavy coat whether you're here or in that terrible city.'

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Fritzi lifted it by the shoulders, admiring it. The coat was dark-brown cheviot, with a small black and brown plaid. The body of the coat buttoned all the way down the front with pearl buttons. The lining was bright yellow silk. A velvet collar ornamented the double-breasted cape.

'I guessed at the length, sixty inches,' lisa said.

Fritzi held it against herself, secretly pleased. If her father had given it to her she'd have refused it, but she could compromise herself because it was from her mother. She was sensible enough not to want to freeze all winter; her old coat had been bought for the milder South.

'Perhaps the other gift will be useful as well.'

Fritzi opened the Field's box, discovered two white pads nested there.

She poked one; it was stuffed with a spongy material. lisa said, 'They call them gay deceivers. You pin them inside your--'

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Dreamers

'Yes, Mama, I get the idea.'

'You really don't need them, of course.'

Fritzi dropped the pads into the trunk tray and hugged her mother.

'You're terrible with fibs. Of course I need them. Thank you.'

Holding the embrace, she felt tears welling, forced them back. When sentimentality, or the uncertainty of her future, prompted her to start unpacking again, she only needed to imagine the face of Joe Crown as he turned away from her on the dance floor. It put iron back into her spine.

At the depot, amid travelers setting out on holiday journeys, Fritzi said goodbye to Carl and her mother. She was wearing her new brown coat and a scarf tied over her hat to protect her ears. Under one arm she had a round tin of lisa's Pfefferkuchen, ginger-flavored Christmas cookies in the shape of stars and hearts and rings.

A freezing wind blew through the train shed, dispersing the steam billowing from under the cars. Carl walked up the platform to deliver her trunk and leather bag to the freight car. lisa said, 'You must let me know at once that you are safe and settled. Telegraph collect.'

i will if you insist, Mama.'

'Yes, otherwise I won't sleep for weeks. Oh! Hat pins! Do you have enough hat pins? In case you're molested on the street?'

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Fritzi laughed. 'Yes, I have a supply.'

'Then I have one more thing to give you.' From lisa's handbag came a sealed white envelope. Fritzi turned the envelope in her gloved hand.

'What's this?'

'One hundred dollars.'

Fritzi shook her head. 'No, I can't. I am going to succeed in New York without taking one cent of Papa's money.'

'This comes from me,' lisa protested.

'Take it back, Mama.' Fritzi held out the envelope. 'If you don't, I'll put it in Carl's pocket when he isn't looking. Or I'll give it to a stranger.'

'Oh, please, liebchen - don't hate your papa so much.'

'I don't hate him. But I'm going to prove I'm old enough, and brave enough, to take the worst New York has to offer, and succeed.' What she said was impulsive bravado. Another hundred dollars would sustain her for a long time. Her anger and resentment just wouldn't permit her to take it.

Carl returned. They all hugged and kissed and said their farewells.

Inside the day coach, Fritzi pressed her forehead against the cold glass and Eastbound

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waved a handkerchief as the Empire State Express pulled out.

lisa disappeared in the steam. Burly Carl ran beside the moving train, waving his cap until he was left behind. The Express headed south to go around the bottom of Lake Michigan. Winter darkness was already settling on the land.

1

Fritzi had never been by herself on Christmas. Even touring, she'd had the m boozy

companionship of other actors. She tried not to think about it.

¦

But it was hard. Village depots and main streets passed by, warmly lit

¦

like toy towns. At a level crossing, three farm children dragging a freshcut 1Christmas tree waved at the train. Later, Fritzi glimpsed a family through
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a window, gathered around a pump organ. She averted her head.

The conductor stopped by her seat. 'Ticket, ma'am.' He was a round, avuncular man, no happier to be working on Christmas Eve than she was to be traveling. 'New York City,' he said, clicking his punch to perforate the ticket. 'Live there?'

'I will when I arrive,' Fritzi said with a smile.

'Dining car's forward. Roast turkey and roast goose tonight.'

'Thank you.' She had no intention of paying for an expensive meal.

She'd dine from the tin of Pfefferkuchen on the seat beside her.

The vast winter dark swallowed the train. Its whistle trailed across bleak fields like a mourner's cry. She tried to read a pro-suffrage article in a Ladies' Home Journal but couldn't concentrate. She speculated about the other eight passengers scattered throughout the car. That red-faced man, was he a tinware or button salesman hurrying home to his family? The woman with her two noisy boys, was she a- young widow? And the swarthy gentleman in the green plaid suit across the aisle? He had large, powerful hands; could he be a circus aerialist?

Perhaps an unemployed musician? She noticed a mouth organ in his breast pocket.

|

East of Toledo, snow began to fall. Wind rose to storm strength, and before long the Express reduced its speed. Evidently it had been snowing heavily up ahead. As the engine swung around a curve Fritzi saw its headlight stabbing through the raging storm. Drifts were building.

Half an hour later, with the drifts growing higher, the train chugged onto a siding and stopped. The conductor came through.

'Track's blocked. Have to wait here for a work engine to plow us out.

By the way, folks, it was midnight five minutes ago. Merry Christmas.'

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Dreamers

He sneezed into a handkerchief and shuffled on. Dread and loneliness crushed Fritzi.

Ellen Terry reprimanded her:

Come, girl. Cowardice doesn't become you. This is a great adventure of your own devising, may I remind you.

Across the aisle, the swarthy man rattled the pages of a Chicago American. 'I beg your pardon,' Fritzi said. 'Do you play that harmonica?'

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'Some,' he said in a strange accent.

'Do you know 'One-Horse Open Sleigh'?'

He played the first twelve notes. '"Jingle Bells."'

'Well, I grew up calling it 'One-Horse Open Sleigh.' It's terrible sitting here on Christmas like mourners at a funeral. Will you play it?'

'Okay,' he said with a cheerful display of white teeth. He tipped his soft hat. 'Aristopoulous my name. Christos Aristopoulous. New to this country five years ago.'

'Like it?'

'Just fine.'

'Good.'

"I am going to New York to meet my sweetheart, Athena, she come from Piraeus on big boat. We marry.'

'Congratulations. I hope you'll both be very happy. Will you play?'

She sang with him. The rowdy little boys ran back and joined in. Soon the whole car was singing.

They sang 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.' They sang carols for half an hour, all except the button salesman, who folded his arms, Scrooge-like in his scorn. The dining car opened and dispensed free coffee and cocoa.

Fritzi slept a little, thankful for the new coat. Around five a.rn. a work train with a plow on the engine rumbled past from the west, opening the rightofway.

The sun came up cold and dazzling over the white fields. Looking out the window at the horizon, she could see for miles. She'd survived the night, thrown off her gloom. She could take the worst that New York had to offer and defeat it. So she thought early on Christmas morning, 1906, without the benefit of experience.

And do not say 'tis superstition ...

- Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale

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We're going to expand this company, and you will see that it will grow by leaps and bounds. The proper system, as I have it in mind, is to get the car to the multitude.

- Henry Ford

11 Adrift in New York

In the spring of 1908, the New York papers announced a return engagement of one of the great ladies of the stage, Mrs. Patrick Campbell. She had launched her American tour at the Lyric Theater the preceding fall, then toured coast to coast for twenty-six weeks, traveling with her company in a private train. 'The immortal Stella7 would conclude the tour with a farewell week at the Lyric, again playing Hedda Gabler, the Electra of Sophocles, and the title role in Pinero's The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, the play that had scandalized the West End and propelled her to stardom in 1893.

Fritzi had seen most of the great women of the stage, from the young and beautiful Ethel Barrymore to the old and wooden-legged Sarah Bernhardt, and of course her idol, Ellen Terry. Last November she'd gotten to the box office too late; the run was sold out. She vowed to see the great lady this time, even if she went hungry to buy the ticket.

Which,

as a matter of fact, she did.

At ten a.m. on a Monday morning in May, in response to an audition notice in the Dramatic Mirror, Fritzi climbed the stair of a building on Sixteenth Street a few doors from Union Square West. Her destination was the office of one of the casting agents scattered throughout the neighborhood.

She didn't like casting agents; most were venal, and tended to take liberties with women. They shoved the same questionnaire into her hand time after time. Parts played? Wardrobe owned? Sing or dance? Learn lines fast? If a producer cast you, the agent took a third to a half of the first week's salary and thought he was doing you a great favor.

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Striving

So far agents had done her no favors; she'd auditioned for scores of parts without landing a role. At the Mehlman agency this morning she had read for a new drama by Edward Sheldon called Salvation Nell, soon to
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open. Eleven other actresses read for the same small part, eighteen lines.

Mehlman didn't even bother with the courtesy of taking each into a room by herself; they all huddled together in his rehearsal studio. The most brazen performance was given by a redhead with breasts the size of cantaloupes.

Mehlman beamed as the redhead emoted two feet from his chair, leaning forward to be sure he noticed her assets. At the end of an hour and a half -- surprise! -- Mehlman asked the redhead to stay and told the others to go.

She had another reading scheduled in the afternoon; perhaps that one would be better. At least the agent had telephoned to ask that she appear.

But she couldn't help feeling discouraged. All she had to show for more than a year of effort was a walk-on as a supernumerary, fifty cents a night, in a flop called The Mongol's Bride. It had lasted one week. She hadn't even reached the lowest rung of the acting ladder, utility player. For that you had to speak a few lines.

During much of her sixteen months in New York, Fritzi had supported herself as a waitress at a cheery restaurant called the Dutch Mill. She liked the owner, who permitted her time off to audition. She was strong enough to handle the long hours and heavy trays. She objected only to the silly starched Dutch girl hat with wings that she had to wear, along with wooden shoes that caused corns.

Unfortunately, the Dutch Mill's owner was elderly. Just in March he'd decided to retire and move in with his daughter in Virginia. The new owner immediately converted the restaurant to a five-cent theater, or nickelodeon as the contemptible places were being called. Fritzi was thrown back on the streets she'd tramped for weeks before finding the waitress job.

She'd recently gotten a new position, night chambermaid at the Bleeker House, a seedy hotel in the theater district. The hotel manager, Mr. Oliver Merkle, was no gentleman. He was in fact a slimy specimen, representing to Fritzi all that was repulsive and frightening about New York. The female staff referred to him as OUie the Octopus or, alternatively, Oh-Oh - the cry of alarm when they saw him coming.

At two o'clock she sat on a bench in the waiting room belonging to Shorty Lorenz, a little blond wart of a man who'd been married seven times. Crowded on the benches or standing nervously were six other Adrift in New York 55

young women, all strangers but one; Fritzi recognized a tiny, pale girl with black bangs whom she'd seen at other readings. Pauline Something.

Pauline gave her a glance without recognition.

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Shorty Lorenz breezed into the room at two-fifteen clutching a batch of sides which he handed out. 'Okey-dokey, girls, this here's a society drama called Shall We Divorce? The producer is Brutus Brown.' There were a few gasps, and a provocative sigh from the tiny girl. Brown was a noted philanderer.