Family Secrets (8 page)

A girl didn’t need to go out with a boy to have a good time. You could go out in groups, which was more fun anyway, besides being safer. And you could go places with your own clique of girlfriends. When Lavinia was pledged to the sorority she most wanted to join, she was delighted. Now she really belonged, and she felt safe. The sorority house was so much nicer than the dorm, and the girls were all like sisters to each other. Most of the boys in their brother fraternity treated them with respect. You knew, at least, that they weren’t total strangers.

She kept up good marks and studied hard. When she came home for vacations she sometimes brought a friend with her, one girl or another from her sorority whose home was far away and who wanted to see New York. She never accepted invitations to visit them, always making up some excuse; her mother was sick, her father needed her. The truth was, Lavinia had no desire whatsoever to visit anyone else. Vacations with her family were a treat she looked forward to. Who knew what kinds of homes those other girls lived in, if she would have to share a bathroom with strangers?

By her junior year at college Lavinia had learned another hard truth about life: not all her sorority sisters were what she had thought. Some were petty, some were slobs, some were dishonest, some disagreeable, some vengeful. One stole things. Another cheated on exams. One, she knew for a fact because everyone knew it, slept with boys. Not just one boy, but
boys
, plural. And when that girl left college in the middle of her junior year to get married, everyone knew why. She was darn lucky the boy was willing to marry her.

So this was the world. There were dangers in it, and not everyone was what he or she seemed. Knowing these things, Lavinia felt wise and worldly. Not all the interesting case histories were to be found in schoolbooks.

At the start of her senior year her adviser told her she should think about staying on to take a master’s degree, then a doctorate.

“You have a great potential,” he told her, “and there’s a need for women in this work. You could teach, or you could work with sick people. I don’t think you should let being a woman block you off from an academic career. So many bright students let their potential go by, just from lack of confidence.”

But Lavinia had had enough of college. She was homesick and she was tired. She would graduate with honors, her Papa and, please God, her Mama too would see her graduate in her academic gown and mortarboard, and then she would go back to Brooklyn. Her Papa could frame her college diploma and put it on the wall of the room in their house he used as a study. She had all her schoolbooks, and she would always keep them. But enough was enough.

TEN

Melissa knocked timidly on the door of Papa’s study. How she wanted him to say yes to her! Everyone said yes to Melissa; yes, and please, because she was so pretty and so winning. But with Papa you could never be sure what he would say. And she wanted this one thing more than anything else in the world.

She had wanted to go on the stage ever since she could remember. She knew she sang beautifully, she played the piano and sang for everyone, and they always begged her to perform for them. She loved to dance, and she knew she was graceful. Her idol was the Divine Isadora, and she imitated her, dressing in scarves, dancing in that flowing, free, Greek way. Isadora was an American, just like her, and she had performed throughout Europe. Melissa even thought perhaps they looked alike; at least she hoped so.

“Come in,” Papa’s voice said.

Melissa entered. Whenever she came into Papa’s study she felt a little awed. It was not a big room, and it looked even smaller because it was dominated by the largest desk anyone had ever seen, huge, of dark shiny wood, with heavy carving along the sides, and heavy curved legs. It was always covered with Papa’s paperwork from the office and his household accounts. Along the walls of the study were dark wooden bookcases with glass doors—little panes surrounded by curved dark wood frames, in the fashionable and dignified manner of the day. Inside those bookcases were worn and cherished books, some classics, some dealing with the lives and struggles of accomplished Jewish leaders. There were all of Lavinia’s college textbooks. And on one wall, above the bookcase, there was Lavinia’s college diploma, in a thin black frame with glass on the front.

Oh, Lavinia, Lavinia! So she was the genius in the family, so what? There was a place for everyone in this world, Melissa knew, and her place was in the world of the arts. She could perform and make people weep and applaud. Not everybody had to be an intellectual. Someday her own framed portrait would hang on one of Papa’s study walls, right beside Lavinia’s diploma—Melissa starring in a musical comedy, or perhaps even an operetta.

“So, nu, Melissa?” Papa didn’t like to be interrupted when he was working in his study. But when else could one speak to him alone?

“Papa, I’ve come to talk about my future,” Melissa said.

“Good.” He didn’t seem to be taking any of this very seriously.

“I would like to take singing and dancing lessons.”

“All right,” he said pleasantly.

“And acting lessons.”

“Acting? For what, acting?”

“I would like to go on the stage.”

Suddenly he was taking her very seriously; he was angry. “Who has been putting such foolish ideas into your head?”

“Nobody,” Melissa said. “It’s my idea. It’s what I’ve always wanted, all my life. I know I’m talented. I feel this is my vocation.”

“Vocation? To go on the stage like a whore?”

“The stage isn’t for whores, Papa. The stage is for talented people who work hard. You’re thinking of vaudeville. I mean the
real
stage. The
theater
.”

“Whores,” Papa said. “All whores and bums and no-goodniks. I say no and that’s the end of it.”

“Papa …” She had tears in her eyes, she knew he would never understand her.

“You want to sing opera, you want to give concerts, recitals, that’s different. That I approve of. For opera I’ll give you lessons.”

“I’m not good enough for opera,” Melissa said. “My voice isn’t strong enough.”

“You’ll go to Juilliard, they’ll make it strong. That’s my final offer.”

“Please, Papa. Please let me take acting lessons. Please.”

“Don’t be silly. Go away.” He turned back to his work.

“Papa!” She was almost shrieking now, this was her last and only chance and she knew it. “Papa, this is what I want to do with my life! What will I do?” It wasn’t coming out right at all. What she meant was: What will I do with all my dreams? But how could she say that? He would only laugh at her.

“Do?” he said. “You’ll take singing lessons or you won’t. You don’t want singing lessons, you’ll do social work or you won’t. You don’t want to do social work, you’ll go around with your friends and have a nice time and then when you meet a nice boy you’ll marry him. That’s what you’ll do.” He went back to his work, and it was final.

Melissa turned and left the study, closing the door quietly behind her. She knew she couldn’t fight him. It wasn’t in her. He had said no and closed off forever a part of her life, and there was nothing she could do about it. Could she leave home, support herself? No, because then she really would be a whore. She didn’t have the courage. It was one thing to be “a gentlewoman of modest means,” but to be an eighteen-year-old girl who ran away from home to go on the stage when she didn’t even know if they wanted her there—never. Without her Papa’s permission and support she was trapped. She felt her throat close. She was being smothered. She rushed upstairs to her room, screaming, and tore all her scarves to pieces, stamping on the ones she could not tear. Her nails were all broken and her toes were sore right through her shoes from kicking the furniture. No one paid the slightest attention or bothered to come up to see what was the matter—Melissa was having another one of her famous tantrums, that was all.

Two weeks later Melissa enrolled in a music theory class at Hunter. It didn’t interest her, but it was better than staying at home doing nothing, and it gave her a chance to get out of the house. There was no one home during the day but Mama and Hazel and the maids; Mama spent most of the time in her room resting, and Hazel was driving Melissa crazy. Lavinia had a job teaching English to foreigners; the boys and Rosemary were in school all day. Hazel was home, alert and eager as some pesty child although she was seventeen. “What’cha doin’?” “Where ya goin’?” You couldn’t go out for a walk without her running after. “Lis! Lis!”

When she was not in class, Melissa was at some friend’s house, or she surrounded herself with girlfriends at home. When she had a group of her friends in the living room, gossiping and giggling and drinking hot chocolate, playing the Gramophone and dancing with each other, Hazel stayed quietly in the corner, content just to watch. It was only when Melissa was alone that Hazel struck. Out came the claw, out stuck the jaw. “Lis …” What a pest.

“You should be nicer to Hazel,” Mama said. “You should take her with you sometime when you go out. It would be nice.”

You couldn’t say no to Mama, she was so sweet and she asked for so little. And sometimes Hazel was useful as a companion, for instance, to go to the theater. Melissa liked to go to matinees, and Hazel would sit through anything, even if she didn’t understand it. Hazel just liked to get dressed up and go. She could stare at all the people and make what she liked of what was happening on the stage, and Mama was always glad to give Melissa the money for tickets for the two of them. And best of all, Hazel didn’t care if you took her to see the same show five times in a row. In fact, she preferred it. It pleased her to know in advance what song was going to be sung or what would happen at the end of the love scene.

For Melissa, the theater was an anesthetic. She could sit there and dream her dreams, pretend she was the heroine on the stage, imagine herself receiving the applause at the end. In her room she could practice the dances in front of her mirror, trill the songs, arrange her hair in the style of the ingénue of the last show she had seen.

Boys she had known all her life asked her out, and sometimes she went with them, if they would take her to a concert or to the theater. Just to have a boy come to call and sit in the living room making conversation bored her to death. She preferred parties. There was always singing around the piano, and dancing, and it was very gay. She wondered if she would ever meet a boy she liked.

When the new shows opened in the fall Melissa was delighted. Between her classes and matinees her days were full, and she didn’t have to think. The first show she decided to see was a new romantic play called
All My Daughters
. She took Hazel. After she saw
All My Daughters
, that was the only play she ever bothered to see; she saw it every Wednesday afternoon. The reason was that for some idiotic reason (since she didn’t know him) she had developed an enormous crush on a young actor in the play named Scott Brown.

He was about twenty-four years old, tall, with blondish-brownish hair, and a sweet, handsome face. The only thing that kept him from being too handsome was that he looked somehow familiar, as if he might be someone you knew. He was a good actor, too, with a lovely speaking voice. Melissa wondered if he was married.

After she had seen the play for six Wednesday matinees in a row, she decided it was ridiculous not to be courageous and go backstage to ask him to sign her program, just as everyone else did. She washed her hair that morning and brushed it dry so that it shone. She wore her new bottle green velvet suit, the one that matched her eyes. She had even bought a little bottle of perfume, and put some on just before she and Hazel left for the theater. Not cologne, real perfume, so it would last until after the show.

“You wait here,” she told Hazel in the alley outside the stage door.

“Why?”

“Because it’s too crowded.”

Hazel stuck her jaw out and followed her.

It was mean, Melissa supposed, but when they got inside the stage door it was so crowded that she was away from Hazel in a minute. She saw her sister looking around in the crowd, and turned away to the doorman who was guarding the dressing rooms.

“Scott Brown, please.”

Scott Brown was not a star, just a player, and Melissa looked so refined that the doorman simply waved her upstairs. She had her playbill clutched in her hand and her heart was thumping with excitement and fear. What could she say to him? Well, she would just ask for his autograph and leave, and no harm done. He could only be flattered … no, he might be annoyed because girls were always pestering him. So then, let him be annoyed. If he was nasty then she could get over her crush on him and think about other, more important things. There were a lot of plays she hadn’t seen yet this year.

His dressing room door was open. He was sitting in front of his dressing table, wearing a dressing gown and taking off his stage makeup with cold cream. Melissa realized she had never seen a strange man in his bathrobe. Why, this was almost like being in his bedroom!

“Excuse me …” she said softly. He turned around. Up close, with most of his makeup off, he looked even younger and nicer. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and was reassured at how pretty she looked. She held out her playbill.

He smiled. “Would you have a pen?”

“Oh, no … I thought you would.” Then she giggled.

“How about an eyebrow pencil?” he said. He rummaged around the clutter on his dressing table and found one. “To whom do I sign it?”

“To me, Melissa Saffron.”

He wrote and handed it back to her.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Thank
you
.”

That was all, then. She would have to leave. “I thought there would be about a million people here,” she blurted.

“No,” he said, and smiled. “They don’t want to see me when they can see Elvina Dare.”

“Well, I saw the play six times, and I didn’t come to see Elvina Dare.”

“Six times?”

“I’m a fanatic for the theater.”

“Gee, that’s really something,” he said.