Three
On that second night of our engagement at Blue Mood, Buddy Beamer interrupted our act earlier than before. He was accompanied by the two topless showgirls this time. Previously, they had joined Buddy only after Captain and I left the stage. The comedian panted around those beauties as if he were a dog in heat. He took off his hat and held it over his private parts, pretending he had an erection so evident that it embarrassed him—and then he turned to me. He started in the gutter and quickly descended into a drain that sloped precipitously down into moral darkness.
After all these years, what I remember most clearly is not any of the rancid jokes that he told and not the meanness of the man who told them. What still haunts me is the raucous laughter with which the audience rewarded him, such pitiless laughter ripe with contempt for those who, like me, were weak and less blessed by Nature than the Blue Mood patrons in all their finery. Arrogant laughter born from vanity and ignorance is no less frightening than the shrieking and shouting of an enraged mob bearing torches and pitchforks.
Perhaps that was the experience that eventually cured me of the assumption that their indifference to my mortification was largely aconsequence of drinking too much alcohol. To believe that the human conscience can guarantee a stable and worthy society is akin to the delusion that the arc of the universe bends toward justice. Forever expanding in all directions, the universe has no arc, and in many people the human conscience is as atrophied as their appendix. Mass murderers and thieves sleep as soundly as people who have done the right thing every day of their lives. If a conscience functions at all, it does so mostly—although not reliably—in those who believe in a higher power of some kind and who fear a judgment more profound than anything courts and magistrates can impose.
As for my guardian, Captain Farnam, the highest power he could imagine was the almighty dollar, which he chased with devotion. He laughed as heartily as anyone in the audience. When Buddy Beamer finished with me and segued into his own act, as I hurried off the stage with Captain close behind, the crowd broke into applause, as though I’d come there seeking their approval and would be gratified by their ovation.
In the dressing room, shaking violently and unable to calm myself, I put on my long johns and hooded robe as Captain enthused over Buddy’s interaction with me. He fantasized that our contract with Blue Mood might be extended indefinitely and at a much higher price. The comedian would surely demand that club management retain us. Eventually we could link up more formally with Buddy, offer a two-act combo, and go on the speakeasy circuit indefinitely. Captain could find a new freak for his ten-in-one and turn over day-to-day operations to Bruno Hiscuss, the pitchman who ballyed the show to the marks passing on the midway.
I listened with growing despair, for it seemed my chances of escaping a life of debasement and humiliation were fast fading.
Long had I dreamed of being rescued, though not by a fairy-tale prince. My deformities ruled out a future as a bride to the ruler of akingdom. Instead, I hoped for a compassionate doctor like the one who freed John Merrick, the Elephant Man. Merrick had suffered from an extreme case of neurofibromatosis and had been exhibited as a freak in the 1870s and ’80s. Although his affliction was not the same as—and worse than—mine, I’d read and reread a book about Dr. Frederick Treves, the man who ransomed Merrick from a squalid and inhumane existence, giving him years of safety, peace, and dignity.
I made my own dignity, and I found some peace in the escape books provided, but there was no safety, no security, in the life I’d been given to live.
There in the dressing room at Blue Mood, as Captain babbled on about a two-act package with Buddy Beamer, I began to abandon all hope that an equivalent to Frederick Treves would come into my life.
Then someone rapped insistently on the door.
When Captain responded, a well-dressed and handsome couple with an air of authority pushed past him and into the room as if on an urgent mission. The man’s face was flushed, and the woman appeared distraught. “What is this girl to you?” the man asked Captain, his voice taut with restrained anger. “Is she your daughter, your niece, any relation at all?” Captain expanded his chest and stood taller, letting it be known by his posture and his haughty expression that this intrusion was an affront to his dignity. However, nothing about Captain suggested that he was in any way dignified. Exasperation only made him look more rotund, straining the seams of his tweed coat. His perpetually pale face paled further, and by contrast the whites of his eyes were revealed as more bloodshot than previously had been evident. Captain was a patron as well as an employee of the speakeasy. His demand that the two intruders leave or be violently removed by bouncers, expressed with the bombast of a carny pitchman, failed to intimidate them.
“No one is throwing us out,” the woman said, as a muffled roar of laughter rose from the showroom. “When we spread a few C-notesaround, the thugs took off their brass knuckles and went away to write letters to their mothers. Who is this child? What gives you the right to exploit her? You have no such right. No one has.”
The Captain fancied that he was not just a showman but also a thespian equal to the great John Barrymore. He contorted his face into an expression of indignation so exaggerated that an illustrated banner bearing such a portrait in front of his ten-in-one tent might have been titledThe Angriest Man in the World. “Madam, her name is Alida, and she is not a child. She is seventeen and my daughter. Without any help from you, Alida possesses the mental capacity to choose how to make her way in this cold and unkind world. Do you think this poor child of God can land a job as a secretary? Looking like she does, would she be hired as a waitress, a shopgirl selling cosmetics, a nanny with children in her care, perhaps a chanteuse crooning romantic ballads? She’schosento be displayed for the wonderment and education of the public, and she makes a very good living for herself.”
“From what I saw on that stage,” the woman said, “I suspect she makes a very good livingfor you, while she lives little better than an organ grinder’s monkey.” She was Loretta Fairchild, as I would soon learn, and I will never forget how she looked that night in her elegant, silky hyacinth-blue dress and string of pearls. She was the picture of self-assurance. In her righteous anger, she appeared fearless, and I’m sure she would have been no less resolute if Franklin, her husband, hadn’t been with her. “You claim to be her father, but a claim made by the likes of you is meaningless. You’d claim to be your own father if there was anything in it for you.”
Captain was not able to sustain the role of innocent, affronted Christian. His faux exasperation hardened into genuine wrath, and his moon face became a sight fit for Halloween. “I have papers to prove Alida is mine. If anyone says she isn’t, I’ll sue them into the poorhouse. You want trouble, you’ll get a kisser full of it.”
I had readLittle Women,Jane Eyre,Pride and Prejudice, and other novels in which strong women triumphed over adversity and took on every challenge with confidence. I was not, however, easily able to speak up on my own behalf. Convinced someone like me could not make her way in the world alone, I indentured myself to Captain Forest Farnam, trading my self-respect for food, lodging, and the protection provided by a well-rewarded keeper. That might have been a convenient excuse for retreating from the struggle required to find a better station in life, but there was also hard truth in it. Every culture in the world, throughout history, has valued beauty above all things other than wealth. Even though by most standards my face was quite attractive—flawless skin, blue eyes, golden hair—I would never win a pageant with my looks. In spite of the daily humiliation that wore on my heart as surely as a flowing river wears a channel in the earth, I counted myself fortunate to be an asset of such value to the Museum of the Strange that I would not be beaten or starved and would be given books that nourished me—for now if not forever.
When this handsome couple weren’t daunted by Captain’s threat, I dared to think my fondest wish might be true: that in real life there were people as honorable as the better characters in novels. That possibility, as slight as it seemed, nevertheless buoyed me so much that, to my surprise, I spoke up for myself. “Captain bought me from my mother. I have no memory of her, but he bought me from my mother.” It seemed that maternal treachery as heinous as that must not be true, but I never was able to convince myself that it was a lie. Such is the world.
“A price so high,” the Captain said, “that I’ve yet to make a profit. She eats twice what a child her size should eat, and she’s so often sickly that her doctor bills alone have prevented me from putting away anything for my retirement.”
At that point in my life, I dared to take a measure of pride in only two things. I possessed a mind sharp enough for the reading of books.And in spite of my fragile appearance, I was always in good health. “I’ve never had one cold,” I objected. “I’ve never needed to see a doctor. I’ve never missed a day in the Museum of the Strange during carnival season or a night on the speakeasy circuit.”
Captain was stunned that I would contradict him, and I was no less astonished than he. Although he had never beaten me or even just slapped me, I knew as surely as I knew anything that Foster Farnam was capable of violence if ever his little money machine ceased to know her place and defied him. Until that moment in the dressing room at Blue Mood, I had always cautioned myself to treat him with respect, with deference. In novels, the timid characters sometimes are inspired to acts of courage by the bravery of others. Perhaps it was the example set by this couple that gave me the pluck to correct Captain’s lie.
Four
In their early twenties, Franklin and Loretta had been dreamers with limited resources, but they also possessed vision and ambition. With enough discipline to work seven days a week, they carved out a place for themselves in a new industry with a bright future—moving pictures. Those were the days of silent films. Mary Pickford. Harold Lloyd. Fatty Arbuckle. Charlie Chaplin.
Although I was seventeen when Franklin and Loretta found me, I’d never seen a moving picture. Their home contained a screening room. In addition to a library of all the productions of Fairchild United, their company, they possessed copies of numerous films made by their friends, including many comedies. During my first month in Bramley Hall, I laughed more than in all my previous years combined.
For so long, laughter had been my best defense against the desire to be done with this world, but it had always been tainted by bitterness or keen anger. Now I discovered that laughter could be an expression of pure joy.
Franklin and Loretta were producers. He directed. She wrote the scenarios and composed succinct and witty copy for the flash cards thatguided the audience through the plot and conveyed essential dialogue that, in those days, could not be captured on film.
In the beginning, they were wise enough to choose actors whose careers were stalling short of major stardom, who could be hired for modest fees while still bringing name value to the project. Broncho Billy Anderson’s days as a star of Westerns were fading as William S. Hart, who had once been a real cowboy working cattle drives, was captivating audiences with his gravitas.
Over time, while still making their own movies, they invested some of their profits in co-financing deals with the studios that were on the rise and would one day be multibillion-dollar companies. In 1923, Paramount’sThe Covered Wagonwas one of the biggest hits to date, and they owned a piece of it. The brightest new star of the year was a handsome German shepherd named Rin Tin Tin. Franklin and Loretta, dog lovers, had a special reason to love Rinny. Their money helped finance Tom Mix Westerns and much else.
On September 5, 1930, not yet having met my emancipators, I had no hope that I would escape the cruelties and indignities that were as much a part of my life as air and water. I hadn’t surrendered to despair, but I had resigned myself to a life of mistreatment, loneliness, and imprisonment.
That Friday, Franklin and Loretta set off on a much-needed vacation, leaving their children in the care of a nanny. They didn’t go far—only down the coast to San Diego, to stay at the fabled Hotel del Coronado and enjoy the city’s Little Italy, East Village, and Gaslamp Quarter.
