The Dollhouse

CHAPTER TEN

New York City, 1952

Darby’s heart soared when she received the envelope with Mother’s familiar, elegant handwriting. She’d stifled memories of home ever since she’d arrived, afraid to think too much about her room, her beloved old house, and the screened-in patio where she’d sat with her dogs and read. Mother wrote with her usual reserve, making no mention of Mr. Saunders, and encouraged Darby to work hard and do well. However, at the bottom she’d drawn a detailed picture of the two dogs lolling in the grass. Darby knew this was Mother’s way of saying she was missed, and she carefully taped the letter on the wall above her small desk.

She’d apply herself and make Mother very proud, and go home for Christmas break with perfect marks. With a sigh, she returned to her homework for her secretarial accounting class, a soporific mess of figures and columns. Her favorite class so far, and the one in which her scores were consistently above average, was typing. While she typed, she remembered how Stick’s fingers had flown along the keyboard, as if they were independent of the rest of his body. He wasn’t thinking about the individual notes but the whole phrase. And Darby found when she looked at sentences, the whole thoughts, of the practice test, she made fewer mistakes than when she focused on the individual letters. Her fingers were becoming more nimble.

A knock at the door broke her concentration. Esme poked her head in, then quickly came in and closed the door behind her.

“I don’t have much time. Eustis is after me. How about we head downtown again?”

Darby hadn’t seen Esme much the past week, and part of her had been relieved. She proved to be a strong distraction, one that Mother would definitely not condone.

“I can’t, too much work to do.”

“The other girls giving you any more trouble? I’ve been stuck in the laundry room all week, couldn’t get away.”

“No, they ignore me completely now, which is fine with me. It’s a relief not to have to pretend to be polite.”

“So come downtown. You owe me, right?”

The strange phrase surprised her, but she held firm. “Sorry, not tonight.”

“Sam asked about you the other night.”

“Sam?” Darby knew exactly who he was.

“The owner’s son, cooks the food.”

“What did he ask?”

“Why I brought you down there. He seemed protective. Don’t you think that’s sweet?”

Darby imagined he was more scornful than sweet, after her silly reaction to the music. “I really shouldn’t.”

“That’s too bad.” Esme dropped her chin to her chest and shrugged one shoulder. “Because I’d love to have someone to celebrate with. But I guess not.”

Darby jumped out of her chair. “You got into acting school?”

Esme nodded and Darby gave her a hug. “Congratulations! I knew you’d get in.”

“But that’s not all.” Esme glowed just like the Ford girls, even in her maid’s uniform with its dull black dress, black stockings, and silly white cap.

“What’s going on?”

“I am. The owner of the club, Mr. Buckley, said I could go on before the headliner tonight.”

Darby grabbed Esme’s hands. “That’s wonderful. How did you manage it?”

“He was holding auditions the other afternoon, right before my shift. I asked if I could give it a shot, like a real singer, and he said fine. You could say I blew his socks off. I’ll have a full band behind me and even a backup singer.”

Her excitement was infectious. How could Darby resist?

As they walked from the train to the club, Esme took Darby’s hand in her own and swung it merrily. They got off at Union Square and headed south down Fourth Avenue, past a cluster of used bookstores, their wares spilling out onto the street in uneven stacks. New York was a town of surprises.

Darby gave her hand a quick squeeze. “So now you’ll be going to acting school, working at the Barbizon and at the club. How will you manage?” Darby thought of her own schedule of classes, which seemed paltry in comparison.

“Mrs. Eustis said she’d arrange my schedule around my classes. She’s not all bad.”

“How did you find the job at the club in the first place?” Darby asked.

“My aunt knows the owner.”

“Did your aunt come with you from Puerto Rico?”

“No. She was here already. I wanted to come. Santurce was too small a barrio to hold me.”

“Santurce?” Darby rolled the word around her in mouth.

“My father had a store there. Sold all kinds of things, candy, plantain balls, and when I was really young, my father had money and we were treated with respect. But things got worse quick. The store kept being robbed and my father lost it, lost everything eventually.” Esme dropped Darby’s hand. “There was no other work, so we all came to America, to live with my aunt.”

“How old were you when you moved?”

“I came here five years ago, when I was fifteen. Now I live in the same building with the people who worked in the fields, the jíbaros. All filthy.”

So Esme was a member of the privileged class in Puerto Rico. That explained her brashness. She wasn’t like any of the other maids at the Barbizon, who avoided eye contact and scuttled down the halls. “What does your father do now?”

“He helps out our building’s super, when he feels like it. But he can’t fix a thing, never was good with his hands. That’s why I have to make it big on my own. I’m not one of these arrimados.”

“Sorry?”

Esme laughed. “People who can’t take care of themselves, freeloaders.”

The girl was to be admired. Darby’s circumstances weren’t nearly as dire, and all she wanted was a decent job. Esme, who came from a completely different culture, wanted to act, sing, become famous. Was she tenacious? Or deluded?

Perhaps a little of both. Darby held her breath as they walked by a man lying facedown on the sidewalk, but even so, the smell of alcohol and grime permeated her nostrils.

“But what about you, Miss McLaughlin? What’s your story?”

Darby shrugged. “My father died three years ago. My mother remarried, and it’s not a very happy marriage.”

“Was she happy before?”

“I guess not. Mother is one of those women who always want more. More friends, more respect from those friends, more clothes. She’s hard to live with. Daddy traveled a lot for work; he sold paper. We were never rich, though, and I don’t think he measured up to her standards. She was pretty mean to him.”

“What about your stepfather?”

“Mr. Saunders? No one measures up to Mr. Saunders.”

They turned into the alleyway and Darby was relieved not to have to go into further detail.

The Flatted Fifth, which was so mysterious and dark after midnight, looked every inch the nineteenth-century tenement building it was under the harsh glare of the overhead lights, with a cracked linoleum floor and a ceiling darkened by decades of cigarette smoke. The first night, with Esme, Darby had been overcome by panic, imagining a nasty man grabbing her and dragging her into the shadows. Funny how innocuous the club looked now.

Esme yanked her across the floor. “I gotta do a sound check. Will you sit in the back and make sure my mic is loud enough? The drummer thinks he’s more important than anyone else onstage.”

Darby placed herself at the table near the back of the room as Esme assembled her musicians onstage and they ran through two numbers. Esme’s voice was deep and low and she sang right to Darby, who beamed with approval.

As the musicians discussed the intro to the next song, a man’s voice rose from the back of the club.

“This isn’t your kitchen, remember that.”

Sam’s voice answered. “No one’s out there, if you haven’t noticed. We have no orders to fill and we’re ready for tonight. This is only an experiment.”

“No experiments. Not at my club. Keep it simple.”

“Don’t you at least want to taste it?”

“I don’t like that kind of food. You’re in America. Fucking idiot.”

The kitchen door swung open and a tall, sullen-looking man with slicked-back hair and bushy eyebrows raged through, the scent of cloves and pepper whirling in the air behind him. Darby breathed in deeply, and jumped when the door swung open again and Sam appeared.

“Dammit,” he muttered.

Darby looked up, embarrassed. She couldn’t pretend she hadn’t overheard the exchange. “Hi,” she muttered.

“Oh. Hi.” Sam wiped his forehead with the corner of his apron. He wore a white shirt that was open at the neck, and had rolled up his sleeves, revealing a soft coating of blond hairs on his forearms.

“Why are you turning red?” Sam asked.

She put her hands to her cheeks. “It’s hot in here.”

“Sorry you had to hear that. That’s my dad.”

Mr. Buckley. Considering his foul mood, she hoped he’d still allow Esme to sing tonight. “Whatever you’re cooking smells wonderful.” She meant it, but she also wanted to make him feel better.

“It’s in the trash now, unfortunately.”

“Too exotic for the Flatted Fifth?”

“We wouldn’t know unless we tried, but he’s unwilling to do anything new.”

“Where did you learn to cook like that?”

“In the army. I was stationed in Southeast Asia.”

Darby didn’t know how to keep the conversation going. Her knowledge of the world was limited to Defiance and small sections of New York City. “How wonderful.”

“Not really.”

Thankfully, the band started up again, this time with a pretty black girl standing a few feet to the side of her. The girl was rail thin and wore a bright slash of red lipstick. Her eyelids fluttered open and shut as she swayed to the music.

When Esme hit the chorus, the girl came in a few beats late. The harmonies were simple, but she didn’t seem to be able to hold the notes long enough and was ever so slightly off-key. Darby’s shoulders rose, an involuntary reaction to the atonal interval, while Sam let out a low “sheesh.”

Darby hummed the harmony under her breath, hoping to correct the girl by osmosis, but Esme stopped halfway through. “Tanya, you’re falling asleep up here. Stay with me, okay?”

The second attempt wasn’t much better. Tanya looked as if she were going to be sick.

“What’s wrong with her?” Darby asked Sam.

“She’s high.”

Tanya put her hands to her head and began listing to the left.

The bass player dropped his bow and reached out to break her fall, but she still landed with a loud thud. Sam raced up to the stage to help.

Esme stomped over to Darby while the girl was carried off by the bassist and drummer. “I knew she wouldn’t make it. This is my big night and she’s ruined it.”

“You can still do the song. You sound terrific.”

“The final number’s supposed to rev everyone up. I can’t rev without a backup singer.”

Sam, who was headed back to the kitchen, stopped in front of her. “Darby can back you up.”

Esme looked up at Sam, then at Darby, her eyes wide.

Darby laughed. “He’s joking.”

“I’m not, I heard you singing the right notes. Not loud, but the right ones.”

She shook her head. “No, I can’t. I don’t sing.”

“I just heard you.”

“Okay, I sang in the chorus at school, but I never did anything for real.”

“Backup isn’t for real; you just stand there and do it.” Esme sang a phrase, her hands stretched out to Darby.

No matter how badly she wanted to help her friend, Darby knew her place, and it wasn’t onstage at a nightclub. She pictured the audience laughing at her, the same way the Ford girls laughed at her.

“I’ll embarrass you, Esme. You’ll do fine alone.”

“Sing.” She started in again.

“I can’t.”

Sam punched her playfully in the arm. “Sing under your breath, then. Like before. Just to prove to Esme that I’m not crazy.”

His touch startled her. She put a hand over the spot where his knuckles had hit her upper arm and rubbed it gently. Darby sang along, quietly, her voice hesitant but on pitch.

“Yes. You’ve got to do it. You do that three times, whenever I do the chorus, and you sway your hips a little, and that’s it.”

“My hips don’t sway.”

“Come with me.”

Esme dragged her down the hall and opened a door.

“Welcome to the green room.” Esme swept her arms around as if they’d entered a parlor in Versailles. A couple of raggedy couches lined the walls, one of which was taken up by the prone Tanya, who snored softly. A small table tucked behind the door held some cups and a pot of coffee. “This is where the cats hang out before each show.”

“Why is it the green room? It’s not green.”

“No idea. That’s just what they call it. Wait here a moment.”

Darby sat on the couch opposite Tanya, her knees pressed tightly together and her hands on her lap. She didn’t want to look like a baby in front of Sam. And she only had to sing three choruses. She’d pretend she was back at school at the end-of-year concert, surrounded by other girls. If she did that, she might be able to do the song without falling over like Tanya.

Esme reappeared carrying her purse, the contents of which she poured out on the floor by Darby’s feet. An array of cosmetics, from lipsticks to powders, scattered about like Christmas tree ornaments.

“Where did you get all these?” asked Darby.

“Whenever a giraffe leaves something behind in the bathroom, I swipe it. It’s like when customers at the Flatted Fifth leave a tip for the waiters.”

“Won’t the girls notice?”

“Nah. They get all that stuff for free, anyway.”

Esme knelt in front of Darby and twisted a bright orange-red lipstick out of its casing.

Darby bit her lip.

“You’re right, it’s too orange. Try this.” Esme replaced it with one that was a softer shade of coral.

“Mother said I don’t have a face for cosmetics.”

“The only requirement for wearing cosmetics is to have a face, and you have one, as far as I can see.”

“It won’t help.” The same words Mr. Saunders had said when Darby and Mother had come back from shopping for Darby’s “city clothes.”

“I like a challenge. Your face is plain, but sometimes that’s the best kind.”

Esme smoothed a cream over Darby’s eyelids and filled in her eyebrows with some kind of stick. The wand of mascara was frightening, but Esme told her to look at the ceiling and then the floor while she covered her eyelashes in black goo.

She grabbed a wide comb next. “Not done yet.” Darby tried not to wince as her hair was combed backward from the way she normally did it, then flipped to one side and combed back again. “Now look.”

A mirror hung crookedly above the table holding the coffee. Darby stood up and stared. Her eyes, defined in black, appeared bigger than they actually were. Her hair puffed up a couple of inches above her scalp, a triumph over gravity. A plastic taste leached into her mouth from the lipstick.

“I look so different.”

“You look pretty.”

Darby wasn’t so sure. “Mother would be horrified. I look like one of those girls.”

Esme’s grip on her shoulders tightened. She put her face next to Darby’s and looked at her in the mirror with a quiet tenderness. “For ten minutes of your life, forget about your mother. You will be one of those girls, the ones who fool around and don’t care and get into trouble. But it’s all an act. I know you’re a good girl. I’m a good girl. We do it for the audience, ’cause they got hunger for girls like that.”

The pretense and bravado fell from Esme’s face, replaced by a look of desperation. “You have to do this for me. One song, three verses, that’s all I’m asking. No one will know. Please.”

Underneath the rough voice and confidence, Esme was scared as well. Not scared of change, like Darby was, but scared of staying put, staying unchanged.

The place where Esme touched her bare skin tingled, the beginning of an illicit thrill that shimmied down her spine. Could she be a bad girl? Esme refused to define herself as a hotel maid. And maybe Darby didn’t need to define herself as a boring secretary. At least not tonight.

“Okay. I’ll try.”

Esme squealed and hugged Darby close. “Go out there and get a seat at a table up front. I’ll call you up when it’s time. And act like you’re having fun.”

“I’m not swaying my hips.”

“Okay, don’t sway, just sing. Keep the mic a few inches away from your mouth, not too close, not too far, and look at me if you get scared.”

Tanya moaned again.

“Should we do something for her?” Darby asked.

“She’ll be fine. She got herself into this mess, and she’ll have to get herself out. Buckley will make the busboys dump her in the gutter if she’s still here at closing.” She turned back to the mirror. “Off you go. I’ll see you under the lights of stardom.”

When Darby emerged from the green room, the club was three-quarters full. As directed, she took a table near the front. The stage was steps away, but she’d have to be careful getting up there so as not to fall or hike up her dress too high.

The undercover policeman whom she’d seen the first time walked by her table and gave her a nod, staring at her two beats longer than what was considered polite. In fact, several of the men at the nearby tables held her gaze, or tried to hold her gaze, before she looked away. A hot rush of shame traveled through her, from her forehead to her feet. Did they think she was a prostitute, sitting alone?

But so what if they did? They’d see soon enough that she was part of the show. She hummed the notes under her breath, imprinting them on her memory.

Finally, Esme’s name was announced and she bounced up to the stage to stand in front of the center mic. Darby nodded along with the beat and clapped at the end of the first song, but her mind was racing, her heart pounding faster than it ever had. A dry stickiness spread over her tongue, a combination of the lipstick and fear.

“And now I’d like to call up Darby McLaughlin to join me.” Esme’s voice thundered across the room.

A sprinkling of claps covered the endless walk onto the stage. Darby positioned herself behind the backup singer’s mic. Esme counted off and launched into “The Bluest Blues.” At one point, she looked back at Darby and gave her an encouraging wave of her hand, which Darby knew meant that she should stop standing like a statue and move in time with the music. She bobbed her head, the best she could do under extreme circumstances.

She couldn’t see a thing out in front of her with the bright lights shining down from the ceiling. It was as if a black fog hovered just beyond the foot of the stage, and she welcomed the darkness, the inability to see people staring back at her.

Esme swiveled her head around. Darby had missed her cue. She joined in, shocked by the loudness of her voice, then pulled back from the mic a couple of inches, remembering Esme’s advice. The first chorus was over before she’d even had time to think.

She was prepared the second time, and matched Esme note for note. The bassist raised his eyebrows and gave her a solemn nod. By the third chorus, she had relaxed enough to let her shoulders dip from side to side in time with the beat. Esme finished with a flourish, holding the last note with no vibrato, a muscular sound that lifted the audience to its feet in appreciation.

“I want to thank everyone,” Esme said over the clapping, then listed the band members one by one. “And especially Darby here, who stepped in at the last moment and saved the day for us. Let’s give her a special round of applause.”

Darby curtsied. As if she were a debutante at a ball. Then turned beet red at her mistake. They trailed off the stage, Esme accepting the accolades of the patrons as though she were Cleopatra on the Nile. At the back of the room, Sam stood next to the door to the kitchen, still in his apron, staring at her. He put his hands to his lips to let out a loud whistle, which soared above the clamor. Darby gave a little wave before a press of well-wishers trying to get to Esme blocked her view.

When they finally got into the green room, Esme turned around and gave Darby a huge hug. She smelled like cinnamon and fresh laundry, unlike any woman Darby had ever known. Then again, she was unlike any other woman she’d ever known.

“You did it, Darby. We did it.”

Darby could only nod, unable to say out loud what she was feeling, a mixture of relief and giddiness.

From the couch, Tanya snored on.