Eventually Dad apologized and acquiesced to my demands. We would fly Mamie’s old friends in and fix up Palmer’s to look like a New York burlesque club. If it took all the money she set aside, then so be it.
So, in the days before the funeral we painted the walls red and put up silk curtains in the strip club. Then my dad hired a handyman, and they built a makeshift runway with a few theater seats around it. The only illumination came from footlights to accentuate the legs of the performers. “They’re the last to go!” proclaimed Candy, an aging dancer with hair dyed the color of a blood orange. She showed up from the airport at five in the morning.
Because of the short notice, the crowd was smaller than I hoped. Besides the old burlesquers there was only me, my dad, Harry Palmer, and a few of the younger strippers from his club. And, of course, the body of Mamie herself, displayed in the corner, bathed in a magenta spotlight.
She was in the rhinestone dress, and we hired one of the best makeup artists in town to make her look like she was about to go onstage. She had dark-lined cat eyes, longspidery lashes, and glittering bright red lipstick. Her white Betty Page haircut was side-swept along her face in waves.
Onstage was Lillian Orlando. She was telling a story about the time she and Mamie caused a car crash, crossing the street to get Chinese food in their stage costumes. Then her song came on, and she did a memorial fan dance to a big band tune. For ten minutes she eclipsed two black feathered fans across her body, strutting above the floodlights, ending the number entirely hidden behind the plumes of her veil.
It was all really beautiful, I guess.
I mean there’s something undeniably soul-lifting about elderly exotic dancers shaking it for their fallen comrade. But I couldn’t quite slough off my sadness. The fact remained: Mamie never got to see this. She died without a reunion, without a chance to be who she most wanted to be again.
After a while, I decided to escape to the bathroom for a minute to catch my breath. When I approached the restroom door, however, it swung open and out walked a woman in stylish mourning gear. Even without getting a good look, I knew instantly who it was.
“Grace,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
Grace fiddled with her hair and looked around the room.
“Attending the burlesque funeral of Mamie Ann Lee,” she said. “I heard you did most of the planning on this one. Congratulations. It looks great.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Oddly enough, I was glad she was there. If I was being honest with myself, some of her advice from that day at her office had guided me. I was about to say something when she looked around again with an anxious gaze.
“Did you know Mamie?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” she said.
Her eyes were still scanning the room. I waited until her eyes came back to me.
“Then how did you find out about this?”
“Your father,” she said.
She spoke quickly, and I almost didn’t hear her.
“What about him?”
The skin around her freckles was turning pink.
“He invited me. We’ve been... corresponding a little.”
My father came across the room just then.
“Grace,” he said. “You made it!”
Then he turned to me.
“Tessie,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind. I thought Grace should get a look at the competition, now that we’re ramping up our efforts.”
He smiled his charming, goofy smile, and rested his hand on her forearm, ever so briefly.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just need a moment.”
The humid club was closing in on me. It seemed very clear, suddenly, that Grace had only taken an interest in me to get close to my supposedly dreamy, single father. So I walked away from the restrooms and stepped outside into the cool of the evening in order to be less aware of this fact for a moment.
Still it stung. Was I going to go the rest of my life thinking anyone who showed any interest in me was my best friend? Was I going to be the last person to understand what was actually happening to me every time? An entire life like that seemed like the most exhausting thing imaginable.
