It felt good to be back with the girls, but talking about Archie made me miss him. What I didn’t miss was hearing the desperation in these girls’ voices, the idea that they all needed a man to rescue them, take care of them, provide for them. They were all so beautiful and talented, and Ziegfeld did have a way of drawing out each girl’s individual talents, I’d give him that. I just didn’t believe that we needed someone to save us. We’d all made it this far, many of us had made sacrifices to become Ziegfeld girls, and if I was going to leave it behind and marry Archie, it was because I was in love with him and I wanted to, not because I needed to.
The final performance was on Friday night, and it had barely seemed to begin before it was time to start climbing those stairs for the finale. Alberto and Chester were in the front row, Ruthie and Lawrence were a few rows back, and I recognized so many other faces. I felt beautiful in the costumes again. I wore a beaded white figure-hugging dress. It was weighty and glamorous, its beaded tassels tapping at my thighs as I took each step. At the top, I turned and looked down at it all, 1,702 seats, a full house, the look of expectation on every face in the audience. They’d given me so much, this sea of people, night after night, warming me with their applause, sending vibrations through my bones with their cheering. I’d been loved by all these friends andall these strangers. I sang my final lyrics with passion, and I couldn’t have wished it to go any better, there wasn’t a stronger note to leave on: the audience roared, they stood, they applauded. I breathed it all in, aware that it was all about to end. Did I really have to let this go? Did I really have to leave all this behind? I swept my right arm out to the audience, reaching from left to right to capture the thunderous percussion of applause, and then my left arm, sweeping across the theater from right to left. Both arms now outstretched to either side, I raised them up. I felt so victorious, my body absorbing it all one last time. I closed my eyes and the applause kept coming, and while I loved it, relished it, I pictured Archie’s face, smiling, his hand reaching out and taking mine, and I felt a separate sense of peace. Opening my eyes again, I mouthed, “Thank you,” then I linked my arm with Eddie’s, descended the staircase and walked off the stage into the wings.
After the show, the girls took me out and we danced all over town. It was as if it were going to be my last night ever in the city—which of course wasn’t the case—but despite that moment of calm onstage, something in me began to feel frantic, delirious, desperate. The final performance had come and gone, and now I had to think about my future. I loved everything about Archie, but every time I pictured walking down the aisle toward him, standing there smiling, his eyes shining, proud and handsome, I started to feel anxious and scared.
I danced with some gent at the Rand and almost let him kiss me, for God’s sake. I was being reckless, and I wasn’t even sure why. When it nearly happened, I quickly took myself off to the ladies’room and confronted myself in the mirror.What are you doing? Get a grip on yourself.But after returning, I was handed another drink and pulled onto the dance floor, and I let the music and the hooch lure me back into the night.
I don’t remember going home. It must have been at some ungodly hour, I’m pretty sure the sun was already up. I vaguely recall one of the girls, or maybe two, hoisting me up the stairs. All I know is that I woke up on the living room floor in Pauline’s apartment. Lara and two new girls, whose names I couldn’t even recall, were strewn about me, one in an armchair, one on the floor, one on the sofa.
I woke before the others, and I should have gone back to sleep, but I couldn’t. My mouth was as dry as sandpaper, and I needed to stop the pounding in my head. From the minute I awoke I had that uneasy feeling, unsettled. I tried to get comfortable, hoping it was just that we’d barely eaten dinner, too focused on having fun, but all I could think was that I had to get out of that apartment. I didn’t want to talk to the girls about the final show, about what would happen next, about the wedding.
I fumbled around in the curtain-drawn darkness, even though it was surely past noon. I changed my clothes, splashed my face with water and tiptoed out the door and down the stairs. I’d promised to visit Ruthie before heading back to the camp, since she wouldn’t be able to travel again for the wedding. The sunlight stung my eyes as I blindly hailed a taxicab.
“Hello, darling,” Ruthie said as I reached the landing of her fifth-floor walk-up somewhat out of breath. “You look terrible.” Shetook me in her arms and gave me a good long hug. I had to reach over her firm, protruding belly and stick out my rear to hug her, and once I was there, I didn’t want to let go. “Come on in,” she said, taking my hand. “Can’t have my new neighbors seeing you in this state.”
“Oh, Ruthie, I feel terrible. I’ve got a wooden mouth and about twenty carpenters in my head.”
“Well. You had a lot to celebrate. Sit down, I’ll make you some tea.”
I sat at the kitchen table and looked around. Her apartment was small and sparse but clean and on a quiet, tree-lined street. You could see the bright green leaves of the treetops right outside her kitchen window.
“It’s lovely here, Ruthie,” I said, taking it all in, then looking at her, noticing for the first time how much she’d changed. I’d seen her at the camp just a few weeks before, but it was as if I hadn’t been paying attention then. From the back, her figure was still slim; it was just her belly that had grown. Her face was fuller, rounder, but it made her look younger and more innocent, cheerful.
“We haven’t decorated yet, I’m still trying to get the hang of this whole being-a-wife business.” She laughed. “Look, Lawrence bought me a waffle iron.” She pointed to a metal contraption that took up almost her entire countertop. “I haven’t a clue how to use it.”
We both laughed, but it made my brain hurt, so I put my head in my hands and squeezed my eyes shut.
And then I stayed there.
I could hear Ruthie pouring the water into the teapot and the clunk as she took cups down from the cupboard. A ripple of emotionrose up from the pit of my stomach and began pressing at the backs of my eyes.
“Oh, honey,” she said with a sigh. “What’s the matter? You really didn’t want to leave the show, did you. I could tell by the way you were carrying on at the camp.” She sat down across from me and pulled my hands away from my face. “I know how much the theater means to you.”
I tried to speak, but a big sob came out instead. “It’s not about the show,” I finally managed. “It’s Archie.”
“What about Archie?” she said, shocked. “I thought you were madly in love.”
“I am, we are… that’s the problem.”
“I don’t understand.”
I looked up at her worried face and felt trepidation at saying it out loud for the first time, to anyone. But she was watching me expectantly.
“I’ve been lying to him all this time.”
“What do you mean? About what?”
“I can’t have children,” I whispered.
The worry lines on her forehead softened and her expression changed from one of concern to one of pity, shock.
“I can’t have children,” I said it again, louder. “I didn’t think I’d ever want to, and now I do but I can’t, and I haven’t told Archie, and he wants a family, and I’m going to trap him, and I’m never going to be able to give him what he wants. I love him so much, and yet I’m going to ruin his life, crush his dreams.” Tears streamed from my eyes. “And I hate myself for it all,” I cried, “for everything I’ve done! And when he finds out the truth, he’s going to hate me too.”
The words seemed to be spilling out of me, and I realized that I was losing control. I felt horrible and yet compelled to keep telling her the awful truth.
“Oh, Olive,” she said. “But how do you know? How could you possibly know such a thing?”
“Because I gave my baby away,” I said, sobbing loudly, realizing how dreadful it was to be saying this to Ruthie, only a month away from giving birth herself, how despicable I must seem. “I got pregnant by some man in California and I gave that poor baby away when she was just days old, and I had just turned twenty, and, oh, Ruthie, there was all this blood!”
