CHAPTER 65
Willa
The Silver Swan is packed. Through the haze created by smoke and stage lights, I can see that people are lined up against the wall in the back, sipping drinks that they must hold in their hand because the tables are all full. Albert at the piano leans toward me and tells me I sound particularly beautiful tonight. He points to a couple people wiping their eyes with handkerchiefs after I finish singing “Danny Boy” and he says, “And they’re not just drunk.”
“Sing it again,” someone yells, and then others call out. So I do. And this time, when I sing about the summer ending and all the flowers dying and that the one I love must leave and I must stay, I think of Alex—gone from us for a week now—and tears are soon slipping down my face, and the room full of people is silent as I start the second verse.
We’ve heard nothing from Alex. Papa told me the child welfare people have said it will be easiest for him if we leave him be to get to know his family. Evie said if we were to see or talk to him now, it would be like starting all over again for him. It would be too cruel.
There is a man at the back who’s staring at me now like he knowsme. But it’s shadowed where he’s standing, and I can’t quite make out his features. Albert told me if I ever saw someone I recognized in the audience, I should let him know so that he can be ready to pay that person to keep his mouth shut about me, but I’m not entirely sure I know this man.
I continue to sing, despite the tears that have fallen, and when I am done, the place erupts in applause. I take my bow and step off the stage. A man in a tuxedo with gold cuff links declares that drinks are on him, and there is more cheering. I part the beaded curtain that leads to the backstage area, and Lila meets me on the other side. She’d been listening.
“Damn, you’re good,” she says. “You had them eating out of your hand, doll.”
“Thanks, Lila.”
“Were those tears real?”
“Aren’t all tears real?” I answer, and she smiles and takes a puff on her cigarette.
All of a sudden there is a loud noise behind us on the club floor, followed by shouts and the sounds of breaking glass and overturning chairs.
I wonder if there is a fight or if someone has fallen off the stage. I hold back a portion of the separating curtain to look, and a wall of people is running toward me like the place is on fire.
From behind me I hear Lila ask what has happened, and someone running past me yells that it’s a raid.
I am pushed to the wall and then flattened against it as patrons fly past me to get to the club’s back entrance, which we entertainers use. A man twice my size spills a drink on my head and then slams into me as another fleeing patron pushes into him. I am about to topple to the floor to be trampled when I feel a strong hand take my arm and hoist me to my feet. I’m thinking it’s Mr. Trout or Foster or maybe even Albert, but I can’t tell because the hallway is suddenly plunged into darkness when someone smashes the electric light above us so that the raiding police can’t see who is escaping out the back door.
“Lila!” I yell, but I can’t hear my own voice above the noise and chaos.
Whoever has my arm has a firm hold and is pulling me along with such force that I can’t stop to see if Lila is finding her way out, too. We are on the narrow staircase, nearly out, but not quite. I don’t know what will happen if the police catch us. I will be arrested, I suppose. Papa will have to come down to the police station and get me out of jail. I feel the color drain from my face as I picture him looking at me from his side of the bars.
“How could you do this to me?” he will say. Or, worse, he won’t say it.
For a moment, I can’t breathe. There are too many people pressing in on me and there’s too much grief at the thought of Papa looking at me that way. And then we are bursting onto pavement that is shining wet with recent rain and glowing under a now-happy moon. The man who holds my arm begins to run, like everyone else, even though at the other end of the alley, police are shouting at us to stop. He keeps hold of me, yanking me down side alleys and back streets, ever farther away from the shouts behind us. My feet and ankles are soon drenched from splashing in puddles. The baby blue dress that is Sweet Polly Adler’s signature frock is soon flecked with mud and dirty rainwater.
We round a corner, and the man stops and pulls me to the side of a building so that we are pressed against the bricks. When he turns to me I see that I was wrong. It’s not Mr. Trout or Foster. It’s Gretchen’s father, Mr. Weiss. He’s the man who’d been at the very back whose face looked familiar to me. He’s the man who looked like he knew who I was.
“What were you doing in there?” he gasps, in between breaths. His voice sounds so ordinary. All these years I expected Gretchen’s father to have a thick German accent. But he sounds just like me, as American as I am. He has the same kind of fatherly look in his eye that Papa would have, but without the devastated hurt.
“I was singing,” I said, unable to think of a better answer.
“I know that, but why? Why in such a place?” He shakes his head, incredulous.
“I wanted to.”
Mr. Weiss leans against the bricks and takes in a deep breath. “You were nearly arrested tonight.”
“So were you.”
He turns his head to look at me. “I’mnot a girl who should be home in her bed.” He sounds angry. Like he’s planning to tell Papa where I was, which means I may not be on my way to jail at this moment but I am going to get found out anyway.
“I know who you are.” I don’t mean for it to sound like a threat, like I plan to see if I can get him in trouble, too. But it sounds like that.
“I know who you are, too,” he says, but not in a mean way. In an irritated way. He pulls me away from the wall, and we start to walk south toward our part of downtown. “You’re the schoolgirl who is always looking in my front window and making my dog bark.”
“I don’tmakehim bark!” I snap back, but at the moment I say this, I realize he doesn’t seem to know I am the mortician’s daughter who lives down the street from him. I am just the girl who makes his dog bark. I may not be in danger of Papa finding out after all. I can’t think of anything worse than Papa having to bear another crushing blow. Not now. Not after losing Alex. I soften my tone. “I’m not trying to make your dog bark. I’m just saying hello.”
