“I’ve got a pal in the company,” one of the singers said, as they descended the stair. “There’s a party backstage and we’ve been asked in.”
It was a measure of the general despondency that no one replied, except for Maybelle, who asked dully, “Do they have any openings?” and when the answer, “Good Heavens, no, do you think I’d be here if there was?” was given, there wasutter silence among the company. And so they left as they’d entered, together, and even if they hadn’t looked theatrical, the company would have stood out from the rest of the departing audience, since they were moving as if they were a funeral cortege caught in the midst of a Mardi Gras.
It was a good thing their hotel was next door to their own theater, because that way, Lester said when he left them, he wouldn’t have far to crawl from the saloon he was going to. Unspoken, but loud enough in all their ears to make some of them go along with Lester, was the fact that the actors at the Leadville Tabor stayed at the best hotel in town, the Tabor Grand, next door to the theater. But that was across the street, and so, as they now knew, in another world entirely from them.
Even Kyle’s impromptu speech about how success in Leadville would bring them greater success in Aspen didn’t lighten the mood. His assuring them that their theater, if not the best, was far from the worst, didn’t hearten them much. It was true it was superior to any of the city’s so called “concert halls,” which featured musical entertainment and boxing matches, as girl waiters circulated in the audience, and not so bad as some other variety theaters in town. But that hardly mattered. They’d never even consider playing a concert hall anyway, and didn’t care about the other variety theaters now. The truth was that “not so bad” and “better” wasn’t the same as “best.” And so even his final rallying cries about the promised land of Aspen, their planned performance there, and the opening of the Jerome hotel, only gladdened their hearts for a little while. For as they each filed into their rooms, they knew that Aspen was weeks away, and that for now, heaven was just across the street.
“It was an eye-opener,” Peggy said as she finished undoing the many tiny buttons on the back of Hannah’s dress, and then turned so that Hannah could do the same for her. “It was that, all right. I never saw the like.”
“I have,” Hannah sighed. “But I’d forgotten. I suppose one grows unaccustomed to luxury as quickly as one gets used to it. There are theaters in New York just as fine—the Astors, the Morgans, and the Vanderbilts have as much money as Mr. Tabor any day. But New York’s only a memory out here, and it’s easy to forget and be pleased with less, thinking the poor conditions you see are the best they have—if you don’t know any better. Maybe that’s why people like to be superior about their home when they travel. It’s more comfortable thanknowing that if they’d money or position anywhere they were, there’d be nothing to feel superior about.”
Hannah took a deep breath as she unhooked the front of her corset. Sighing with relief as well as sorrow, she slid her long nightdress over her head so she could take off the rest of her clothes without scandalizing Peggy, and added sadly, “So it’s as well we didn’t have the chance to go to a performance at the Tabor in Denver, or I suspect most of us wouldn’t have got even this far. I hear it’s even grander than this one. Well, but by then Mr. Tabor had met Baby Doe; he only built this theater for his vanity and his first wife.”
“Aye, too true,” Peggy said, or something like, for she was scrubbing her face at the washbasin as she did.
Hannah waited her turn, her eyes on the window with the shade drawn against the lights of the Tabor hotel and theater, although all her thoughts were on it. The illusion of the challenge of the West and success in that brave new world had sustained her through much. But then, illusion always had. It had been hard to leave New York, harder now to realize she truly was exiled. Loneliness had always been her chiefest enemy, even before her fiasco of a marriage; times like these made her wonder if the war she waged against it was worth it. Illusion was her only ally, but now it was temporarily defeated.
And so when she heard the faint tap at the door, she reacted with as much glee as surprise, rushing to answer even if she was in her nightgown, not caring who it was—even Kyle with another rallying talk, or Lottie with another complaint, would be welcome. But in her mood, the drunken miner or madman, the women of the troupe always worried about intruding on them in the night, would have been welcome.
But it was only little Polly Jenkins, standing on the doorstep in her flannel night robe, alone, and looking afraid. After glancing down the hall to see if Mrs. Jenkins was there—since the only time she ever saw Polly without her mother was when she was onstage—Hannah asked quickly, “What is it Polly? Is your mama ill?”
“Oh no, no, please can I come in?” Polly asked in a rush of a whisper, looking behind herself, and looking even more fearful as she did.
When they’d hurried Polly through the door and barred it against whoever she was fleeing, they were shocked to discover that it was Polly’s mother she’d fled.
“If she knew I was here…oh, you mustn’t tell her,” the girl said in an agonized whisper, looking from Hannah to Peggy, who stood around her in their white nightdresses and with their long hair unbound, looking like two distracted angels hovering about a junior member of their heavenly choir.
“No, of course, certainly not,” Hannah assured her, before she asked hesitantly, “Umm, but what is it that we mustn’t tell her?”
“It’s about my doublet—for Fauntleroy…” Polly said, producing it from beneath her night robe and then hanging her head until her black sausage curls covered over her heated face, “I tore it again.”
“Why, but that’s nothing, nothing at all, my dear,” Peggy said at once, inspecting the split seam in the side of the bright blue doublet. “?‘Tis the work of a moment, I can run it up right now, if you want to wait.”
Hannah smiled at Peggy over Polly’s bent head, thinking about the crystalline purity of a child’s conscience, when Polly added in a choked, tear-glutted voice, “Won’t do any good. It’ll only tear again. I bind tight as I can, but they’re getting bigger every day.”
It took only a moment for the women with her to realize what “they” were, and then they both stared down at the heavily ruffled front of Polly’s robe. And since there was nothing to be seen, neither knew what to say.
“They get bigger every day, I swear it,” Polly cried in anguished tones. Then she said tearfully, “I’m fifteen, though Mama tells everyone twelve. But I’m small for my age, and Mama’s smallthereso she thought I’d be, but I’m not anymore. She’d kill me for sure if she knew I was here, but I knew you’d know sooner or later, because you sew my clothes, Peggy, and you’d mention something to Miss Hannah, and everyone knows Miss Hannah is sharp as can be. So I waited until Mama was asleep and the halls were quiet…Can you make the doublet bigger or something, because it’s not that I’m a coward or a complainer, like Mama says, but it hurts to bind them so tight. Truly it does. Can you do anything, please?”
Hannah and Peggy looked at each other.
“Surely, if you told Kyle…?” Hannah began, but Polly looked up wild-eyed and cried, “Oh no! We need this job! It’s only for a few more weeks, like Mamasays, oh please,” she pleaded. “I’m scared to even talk about it, the walls in this hotel are so thin, but what else can I do?”
Peggy nodded and went to get her measuring tape and sewing box. “Let’s have a look,” she said when she returned to Polly’s side. “Come then, we’re all females here, and I can’t sew for what I can’t see.”
She’d only meant for Polly to open her robe, but with the trusting literalness of youth, Polly removed her robe, and averting her head, quickly undid the drawstring on her nightgown, pulling it down to show two small, firm, uplifted breasts. They were not half so big to the other women’s eyes as they were to Polly’s own, but upon seeing them, both the older women remembered the pride and confusion they’d felt when they’d first noticed the change in their own bodies. And seeing Polly wince as Hannah gently drew her gown up to cover them again, they both recalled the exquisite sensitivity of those newly formed breasts.
Peggy put down her measuring tape, “I’ll let it out, make a double seam, and an extra yoke,” she said in very businesslike tones as she sat to begin the repairs.
“I don’t see why we can’t just forget the belt, too, do you?” Hannah added.
“Aye, long and boxlike, it’ll be smart as paint,” Peggy assured Polly. “Now,” she said, “you get on back to your room, and I’ll have this by morning. Then you get your other costumes to me, and just see how I alter them. No one will be the wiser. But don’t bind so tight anymore,” she gestured to Polly’s chest with her needle, “you hear? Or you’ll have pancakes by the time you’re twenty.”
Hannah began laughing, and then, for a wonder, so did Polly, and Peggy joined in, so that it was a few minutes before they could let her go back to her room.
“Thank you, oh thank you,” Polly said fervently, as Hannah opened the door. “How can I thank you?”
“Hush, no need,” Hannah said, “but be quiet, we don’t want to wake the neighbors.”
