“No, just noting your response to it. But I’m making pretty good money, Pa, I’m contributing to the house, seventy-five dollars a week.” I tried to appeal to his financial mind. He knew there were very few places where I could work and bring in that kind of money, but he didn’t think it was right for a woman to work anyway. He thought a woman’s job was at home, making some man happy. He already had my life planned out for me, indentured to a man none of us had even met yet. But what about me? What about my happiness?
“Olive,” he said more quietly now, giving me hope that my reasoning had reassured him, “if you quit that show first thing tomorrow morning, then I will pay you one thousand dollars.”
My mother gasped, but my father kept his eyes fixed on me, wanting an immediate response.
“Papa,” I said, almost in a whisper—this was pointless, he wasn’t listening to a word I said.
“Hell, I’ll give you two thousand. Three thousand.”
“Pa, stop this,” I said, hot and angry now. How could he think this was about the money? This was about life, this was about living. “I’m not going to quit the show.”
The intensity in his eyes turned to fury, and his lips pinched into a snarl. “Then you’d better damn well start packing your bags and looking for a place to live, because as long as you keep doing what you’re doing, prancing around like a good-for-nothing quiff, you will not live under my roof.”
“Teddy, don’t say that,” my mother cried out, but he had stormed out the kitchen to the backyard and let the door slam behind him.
That night I lay in bed staring at the darkness. We’d been leading up to this for some time now. My father had never liked me being on the stage. He hadn’t liked the way people looked at me; it made him angry. But what if he knew everything about me? What would he think of me then? It cut me deep inside, knowing that the possibilities for disappointment were endless. I knew he’d think I’d quit, that I’d be too scared to disappoint him. And he’d be right, I was scared. I was scared that I wouldn’t be his little girl anymore, that he’d never forgive me, that our relationship would be forever changed. But I also knew I didn’t want to be like them, married at seventeen, a kid at nineteen, a second at twenty-one, a third at twenty-three, a fourth at twenty-six. To me that sounded like living a prison sentence. I’d known since I was a little girl that this domesticated life didn’t appeal to me. Maybe one day I’d change, but not yet. I still had some living to do.
The next morning, I got up and went to early morning rehearsal as usual. We had a two-hour session on nothing but the walk. Mr. Ziegfeld had watched from his box the night prior and said that many of the new girls—me included—didn’t have it quite right. The walk was what most of us did ninety percent of the time we were onstage, either while another girl or guy was singing, to walk the staircase (often with a long line of other chorus girls following along behind), or simply to cross the stage. It was an essential part of the show and it had to be perfect. Arms elegantly outstretchedto both sides with a slight dip of the elbow and a slow and steady saunter—no hip swaying—in heels and, more often than not, with a very heavy headpiece.
My arms felt as if they were going to drop off my body by the end of rehearsal, and my neck was as stiff as a board. I laid my head down on my dressing room table and closed my eyes.
“Hey there, Olive, what’s the matter with you?” It was Ruthie coming in from her voice lesson. She looked in my mirror and checked her rich red hair, giving herself the lips and turning her head from side to side, admiring her high cheekbones. “You have a rough one last night? I didn’t see you at the club.”
“I just need to soak in a bathtub for a few hours,” I said, thinking of the tub at home. “Say, do you know if there’s any space available at the rooming house where you and Lillian stay?”
“There’s a wait list, but after next week some space will open up. Lillian and I are getting our own apartment uptown. You should come with us. That rooming house is no place for us Ziegfeld girls. There’s going to be a third roommate—someone Lillian knows from theScandals,but you could sleep in the living room, and then it would be a better price for all of us.”
“Really?”
“Sure, honey, it’d be swell, wouldn’t it? And you should see this place—it’s a stunner, views of the water, a straight line down to Times Square. You want in?”
“Sure, I want in, but I might need someplace to go this week. Do you think I could bunk with you at the boardinghouse for a few nights?”
She raised an eyebrow. “What’s wrong, you too good for Flatbush all of a sudden?”
“My pop is all sore about the show, wants me to up and quit.”
“Oh, Olive. You shouldn’t have let him see it—what did you think he was going to say?”
“I don’t know, I guess I thought he’d be proud of me or something.”
“Honey, no one brings their fathers. They want to take care of us—all men, fathers, husbands, lovers—if they feel you slipping away, like they can’t take care of you no more, they act up. I’ve seen it here a thousand times. But you can’t quit, honey, you just got here.”
“Oh, I’m not quitting,” I said. “Not now, not ever.”
I crept around my parents’ house for the next few days, coming home when they were already in bed and trying to be up and out the door before they were awake in the morning. The first few days I left a note on the kitchen table for my mother, letting her know I had an early rehearsal and that I’d be back after the show—no need to wait up. It was exhausting and the girls often found me napping in the dressing room at the Amsterdam when they came in for morning rehearsals.
On Saturday, I tiptoed into the kitchen well past oneA.M.and my mother was sitting at the table with a magazine in front of her. She closed it when I walked in.
“It’s late, Olive,” she said.
“I know, we had to stay after, to go over some steps…” I trailedoff, then walked to the kitchen cabinet, took a glass down and poured myself some water. I’d had two glasses of champagne at the speak and I hoped she wouldn’t smell it on me.
“Why don’t you sit with me for a minute.”
“All right.” I stood at a distance and gulped down my water, then took the seat opposite her, my hands folded on the table between us. She reached out and took my hands in hers as if she’d been waiting all night to do this. We hadn’t spoken since the blowup with my father, and now there was a softness about her, a kindness.
“I think you’re wrong, Olive,” she said gently. “You’re wrong to be doing all this.”
