Pretty soon we were regulars on the Vallee show, we who’d never done anything regularly in our lives. And soon after that, we were called into DelGizzi’s again, this time to a booth in front of the three little pigs, pink bellied and blithe despite the smell of seasoned pork chops in the air. Tansy played dumb for the first half of dinner, but then he couldn’t contain himself.
“You doubted me,” he said.
“We never doubted you,” said Rocky.
“You doubted me,” Tansy repeated. He was trying his best to look downtrodden, but he giggled. In fact, he couldn’t stop.
“What is it, little one?” Rocky asked.
Tansy was steering his steak around his plate with a fork. “Broadway,” he managed to squeak out. “A revue. In the spring.”
Rocky reached out with his own fork and stopped Tansy’s steak. They sat there a moment, fork to fork, and Rocky gave a whoop, and speared the steak and brought it to his own plate, where in celebration he began to carve it in thirds the way a dreaming general slices a map of enemy territory.
“Tansy!” I said, because it was all I could think of. “Tansy!” My first instinct was to run to the phone and call—well, who? Annie. Miriam. My father. Hattie, who would have been flat-out stunned. It was the first sudden success I’d ever had that didn’t involve a girl.
Rocky said to Tansy, one hand over his heart, “We never doubted you.” He put a piece of meat on my plate and a piece on Tansy’s and began eating what was left, as though through this ritual he and I, like the little man with the pointed teeth, would be able to see into the future.
How We Became The Boys
The Money Show, like our Grossinger’s appearance, was a burlesque-style review—one of those shows that was like Hellzapoppin’ but wasn’t Hellzapoppin’. Some dancing, some singing, a couple of knockabout comedians. We had two bits, a comic skit and a song-and-dance number in which I played a cop trying to arrest a comely young lady who was, of course, Rocky in drag, trying to escape a couple of mobsters. Rocky didn’t like the song we were given, so he rewrote the lyric. It was called, “Stop! You’re Under Arrest.” I still sing it around the house:
ROCKY: But aren’t you married?
MIKE: Aw, she’s an old battle-ax.
I’ll keep you in diamonds
I’ll keep you in Cadillacs
I’ll keep you in caviar
Up to your elbas.
ROCKY: What, no dessert?
MIKE: A dozen peach melbas!
ROCKY: Officer, darling,
You’re sweet, I’ll confess,
But I’m spoken for—
MIKE: —Stop!
You’re under arrest!
Plenty was different, now that we were in a show with actual backers, but the best of it were the costumes. My cop’s uniform was real, not a dark suit dressed up with silver buttons. Rocky’s dress was heavy cotton accented with black lace. Beneath it he wore a kind of padded union suit to make him curvy.
“Wouldn’t you marry me?” he asked, swooning at himself in the mirror. Though he’d already applied his giant red lipstick and his giant red wig, all he wore was his voluptuous undersuit.
“Well,” I said, “I’m thinking it over. No.”
He put down his powder puff. “Why not?” he asked, hurt.
“Because you’re too good for me, sweetheart.”
He blew me a kiss.
How long had it been since either of us had stayed anywhere for more than a month? What luxury, to really live somewhere. We got apartments in the same building on East Sixty-fourth Street—nothing grand, just one-room places in a turn-of-the-century building with a view of the river. I unpacked my suitcase, went to see movie matinees, ordered telephone service in my own name. By now Penny and Rocky were an absolute item. She came backstage after the show every night, trying to find Rock. It must have been an unpleasant surprise for Penny to make out, down the hall, the blurred figure of a dowager, only to discover upon her arrival that it was in fact her steady beau. “I don’t like you like this,” she said.
“Why not, darling?” Rocky put his arm around her and patted his sizable bosom. “You scared? Just rest your head here and tell me all about it.” He kissed her cheek. She scowled and tried to scrub the lipstick off with her knuckles.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “I thought you liked female imps. You liked Eltinge, didn’t you?”
She tried to pull off his wig, but he wouldn’t let her. “Eltinge,” she hissed, “didn’t look like my mother.”
The Money Show tried out in Providence and opened in New York in the middle of September 1938. The show was a modest hit, but Carter and Sharp, all the reviews said, were a real find—Rocky Carter never played his scenes the same way twice, and Mike Sharp kept up with every turn he took. Brooks Atkinson said we were the only reason to go. Between that and spots on the Vallee show and a few late-night club gigs, we did pretty well for ourselves. Before 1938, if we’d broken up, nobody would have noticed. Now we were The Boys. That’s what people called us. Where are The Boys? The Boys are headlining at the Steel Pier next month. The Boys won’t work for less than two thousand a week.
We had more money that we’d ever had in our lives. Rocky spent every dime, on fresh flowers for his buttonhole, on good suits and good food and drinks for everyone in the house, no matter what the house was. Rocky loved gratitude. Gratitude from strangers was even better. The Money Show closed after two months, but we didn’t care. We’d been called to California, by a big studio, for a feature.
“We’ll stop in Valley Junction this time,” said Rocky. I was helping him pack up his apartment, which in two months he’d managed to fill with outgrown-clothes and half-eaten sandwiches. He was rewarding himself for his industry by taking sips from a silver flask that Penny had given him.
“No,” I said. “Are you saving these magazines?”
“Why,” he asked, “are you so pigheaded about this? You got a family who loves you. I want my sixty percent of that love. Course, I’m willing to take all of my cut of the love from Rose—”
“Stop that. I’m not pigheaded. I want . . .” Even talking about going to Valley Junction terrified me. My fear, I know now, was a brand of homesickness so thorough you feel helpless, and so want to stay away from the thing that infected you in the first place.
I’ve lived a long time, and so people ask if longevity runs in the family. Now I can say yes: my sister Annie lived to be more than a hundred, my sister Sadie ninety-two. Various nieces and nephews who are about my age still walk the earth, and by walk I mean actually walk. But if you’d asked in 1939, I would have said no, sadly. My mother had died young; so had Hattie. I did not know any forebears other than my parents and Rabbi Kipple, and I always thought of Rabbi Kipple as exactly the age he was in his portrait, in his forties. Everyone else was dead; everyone else had died before I was born; therefore, everyone else had died young.
When I’d left town more than ten years before, I’d reconciled myself to the fact I’d never see my father again. My sisters, I figured, would show up in my life eventually. They’d come to a show, or I’d walk into a train car and there one would be, or—this was most likely—I’d get a telegram informing me of my father’s death and if I got it in time and wasn’t on one of the coasts, I’d go to the funeral. But my father would die. Who survived old age?
Sometimes I thought: surely he’s dead by now, and nobody’s told me. Then I’d get a letter from Annie, bless her heart, filling me in on the news of the family. How could it be that a man who died in my head once a month could live so long? Understand: I wanted him to live forever. Thinking about his death was how I punished myself. Heartless boy (I would always be a boy in my father’s presence) to have left a father who loved you. Heartless brother, to leave your sisters weeping in the parlor. People in Valley Junction knew my mother, but they loved my father. I imagined the back steps piled high with offerings. Soon the steps would fill, and the neighbors would hang the branches w
ith tureens of soup. They’d line up as many pound cakes as would fit on windowsills. There’s a loaf of bread in the mailbox. There are pies in the bushes, their meringues dusted with snow. Someone has slipped a stack of pancakes under the doormat. Candy like fallen leaves lies in heaps everywhere, everywhere.
But he didn’t die. Over and over he didn’t die.
Now Rocky shook his flask at me. “I’ve already cabled them,” he said. “I signed your name. It’s all set.”
“Oy vey,” I said. My hands and feet began to prickle with fear. “No—”
“You’ve already said yes. You can’t just change your mind. You promised me.”
“When did I ever—”
“We were thirty-two miles southeast of Chicago, sitting in the dining car of the Wolverine. You said, ‘Next time. I promise.’ It’s next time. You promised. Me, and now the rest of the Sharenskys.”
“Goddamn your memory.” I massaged my eyebrows, which for some reason usually calmed me. “Rocky. Rocky. I’ll—”
“Don’t break our hearts, Mosey,” he said quietly.
I sighed. He had me. It was one thing not to go home; it was another thing to say I would and then not show up, even though I hadn’t said I would. I sat down on the sofa. Something broke beneath the cushion—a plate, maybe. I held out my hand for the flask. “Okay. Good God. Why on earth? I guess we could.”
“Sure!” said Rock. “And I’ll stay in a nice hotel—the Corn Cob Arms, that the best one?”
“The Fort Des Moines,” I said.
“The Fort Des Moines. And maybe you can invite poor goyishe me over for dinner so I can meet your sisters. I’ve been dreaming about those sisters for a while now. I mean, I’d never be unfaithful to Rose, but I’d like to get a gander at the whole sorority. How many are there? Thirty-six?”
“Five,” I said.
He said, “Annie-Ida-Fannie-Sadie-Hattie-Rose.”
“Five living sisters,” I said, “and three of those are married.”
He took back his flask and toasted. “Many a fine woman is.”
7
An Orphaned Girl Is Hard to Marry
Rocky and I got separate sleepers for our trip West. “No more berths for us!” he declared. In Chicago, we’d change for the the Rock Island Rocket.
“You’ll get off in Des Moines,” I said, consulting the timetable in the dining car. “And I’ll—”
“We’ll both get off in West Des Moines,” Rock said.
“There is no West Des Moines,” I explained, but there it was in print, the next stop after Rock Island Station, right where Valley Junction should be.
“Annie wrote you,” said Rocky. “They changed the name last year. And I’m coming with you.”
“That’s not—”
“Yes, it is. First West Des Moines née Valley Junction. Then I’ll investigate the fleshpots of Des Moines, and you’ll reconvene with your sisters.” He thought I’d bolt. I’d keep going west till I got to Nebraska.
You would have thought he was the one going to meet his family, whom he loved. In the dining car he wondered what Annie would cook.
“Green beans,” I said. “And cookies that taste like pencil drawings of cookies.”
“I can’t wait.” He sighed. “And to see little Rose, all grown up. Do you think she’ll remember me? Do you think she’s been true?”
“Rocky.”
“Little Rose Sharensky. I do love that girl. . . .”
“Why did you do this to me?” I asked. I swiveled to sit sideways in the booth, then got a little motion sick and swiveled back.
“You’re not mad, are you? You’re going home a hero!”
“Of course I’m mad,” I said. “I don’t want to do this. You’re making me.”
“You know what I’ve never understood about you?” said Rocky. “I’m being serious now. Tell me why you left home.”
“You know why,” I said.
“Okay, so let me tell you why I left home. My father once beat me because I left my homework on the sofa.”
My father, a shopkeeper, wanted me to inherit his store.
“My mother once refused to talk to me for three weeks because she thought I’d taken more than my share of sugar. I was eleven,” said Rocky.
My father wanted me to work beside him every day, to be his right-hand man.
“My parents once went on a research trip to Ontario. They left me at home with a list of things not to touch. I was nine.”
My sisters wanted to see me become, like my father, a pillar of the community. They wanted me to marry a nice Jewish girl and have children and never leave Iowa.
“My mother told me I had ruined her education. My father told me I had ruined my mother. My mother said she hated the sight of me. My father said he despised my voice.”
My family worried, worried, worried about me, until I couldn’t breathe.
“And you know what? We write. We talk on the phone. They can’t stand me and I love them, and what’s kept me on the road is that someday they’ll go into a movie theater and see my face and maybe for a moment think, Look at the kid! Who wouldn’t love him? But you,” he said.
“Me.”
“You ran away from home because your family loves you too much!”
I tried to smile at every single person in the dining car: Nothing wrong here, folks. An olive-skinned girl in a violet blouse gave me a sympathetic look before turning to gossip with her friends. I wanted to go and join them. “Sshh. That’s not it.”
“Right, right, right, your sister died and she would have been a star and you made a promise and you’ll kill yourself to keep it. But she never would have made it in vaudeville, you know that.”
“Rocky—”
“Look, I’ll leave Hattie alone. She’s dead, she’s wonderful—I’m sorry, it’s just that your cowardice on this subject, it gives me a headache. I don’t understand it. And the reason I sent that cable was because I knew—don’t fool yourself, I know everything about you, I know every stupid secret—is that once you see your sisters and your father and that store, which, I assure you, you have escaped for all time, you will be happier and less fearful. And that will make me happier. And possibly less fearful. For Christ’s sake,” he said bitterly, “I’m tired of your moods.”
He pushed away his china dinner plate and glared at me. There was a trail of grease down his shirt from where he’d dropped a piece of ham steak. Then he got up from the table. “Please, Professor,” he said. “Don’t fuck this up for me.” He turned and left for his sleeper.
I didn’t know this before, but it is comparatively easy to pick up a girl in a dining car if she sees you being bullied by a fat man, even if she doesn’t speak English.
In the morning he was contrite. He knocked on the door of my room—the sympathetic Portuguese girl (I think she was Portuguese) had gone back to her friends before dawn—with a plate of scrambled eggs in his hands, which he managed to eat standing up, despite the train’s shimmying. “I got things on my mind,” he said. “I don’t mean to take them out on you.”
“What things?” I asked.
He waved his fork dismissively in the air. “You know. Everything. I just don’t want you to worry. You’ll see your family. We’ll have a nice meal. Rose and I will make our wedding plans. Then we’ll all go out to California and make movies.”
“All of us?”
“Sure. Annie play the oboe or something? We’ll find a spot for her. She’ll give ZaSu Pitts a run for the money. We’ll invite all the Sharps into the act.”
That’s what I was afraid of.
We stepped off the train into an ice-blue afternoon. There would have been frost on the ground that morning. West Des Moines, huh? It was as though Valley Junction had been forced into a bad marriage, and decided to put on a brave face. I was wearing one of my old Sharp’s Gents’ suits out of nostalgia and realized, for the first time, that I’d gotten a little taller and a little wider since I’d left. My wrists hung out of the sleeve
s and the wind bit at them.
“Okay,” I said. “Come on.”
I looked up Fifth Street.
“Well?” said Rock.
“Strangest thing,” I said. “Store’s not here.”
“It moved.”
“What? It was right here—” I pointed at a dubious-looking restaurant.
“It moved,” Rocky said. “Do you even read Annie’s letters? Five years ago, your old man moved the store. Come on.” He grabbed the back of my coat and towed me up the street till we got to the slightly more genteel two-hundred block, my suitcase bouncing against my leg. Our trunks had been sent on to California. That’s what a small town it was, one block and you were in a better neighborhood. There was the store. Across the new window painted letters spelled, Sharp and Son’s, which broke my heart and made me happy.
The Depression hadn’t missed Valley Junction. Ten years after the crash the town looked rearranged and abandoned. The Rock Island line had moved its roundhouse. The trains still came through, but few of them stopped. No good to the town unless they stopped. The men who’d banked with my father were smart. Old Man Sharp paid no interest, but he charged no fees and he’d never fold.
The new store was clean, with linoleum floors and bright hanging light fixtures and signs on the walls that pointed out departments, if you could call them that: Shoes, Suits, Hats. They’d kept the sliding iron ladders, I was glad to see, and the big front counter, and the man who stood behind the counter, his hands held an inch above the glass top.
“Well, good grief,” Ed Dubuque said to me. “The fatted calf has come home.”
“I don’t think it’s the calf that comes home,” I said, but he was already throwing his long puppetish arms around my neck. Ed’s hair had thinned and his face had picked up a few lines, but then so had mine, so had mine. He looked wonderful. Did I have to go to the house? Couldn’t the three of us spend the afternoon in a pool hall, drinking beer and making bets?