Before I boarded the train to head back to the city, I called my parents from Blue Mountain House. I felt sick with anxiety waiting to connect and was immediately relieved when Junior answered.
“It’s Olive,” I said, my voice already starting to break. “I have a message that I need you to pass on to the rest of the family.”
“I’ll get Pa on the line, he’s in the living room.”
“No, no,” I said quickly, “just tell them, tell them to cancel their plans for the Adirondacks, the wedding is off.”
“What?” he said louder than I wanted him to. “What do you mean the wedding’s off?”
“What do you mean the wedding’s off?” It was my mother now, she must have heard Junior and grabbed the receiver from his hand.
“It’s over, Mother,” I said, the tears running down my cheeks all over again. “There isn’t going to be a wedding.”
“No,” she said firmly. “Not again, you’re not doing this to us, Olive, you’re not humiliating this family again. What did you do?”
“I … I…” I suddenly couldn’t speak. What could I possibly say to make her understand? “We can’t marry,” was all I could manage.
“You have to fix this, you do whatever it takes to fix this. He is a good man, Olive. You go back to him and you make it right, do you hear me?”
“I’m sorry,” I whimpered into the phone. “I’m very sorry,” I said, and I hung up the phone. I took a few deep breaths and then, before I could talk myself out of it, I picked up the receiver again. This time I called the New Amsterdam and asked Ziegfeld’s secretary, Mrs. Parham, to pass a message on to the girls. It was a painful and humiliating call to make, but at least this way I’d have to make only one call and the word would get out in time for them to cancel their travel plans.
On the train, I sat and stared straight ahead at the seat in front of me. My tears had finally run dry and my eyes burned. I was frozen. I couldn’t move. All I could do was try to consider what might happen next. I seemed to be able to think only a few hours ahead; everything else seemed insurmountable. Ruthie and I had given up our apartment months ago, and I couldn’t possibly face going back to my parents’ house in Flatbush—not now, with my tail between my legs, a failure just as my parents had predicted. So I decided to go to the Saint Agnes Residence, one of the boardinghouses for women that I’d heard a few of the theater girls mention. There were other boardinghouses around town, all strict with curfews, simple and affordable, but Saint Agnes was the only address I could recall.
I took a taxi from the train station and arrived on the steps at 237 West Seventy-fourth Street just before four P.M. I should have known from the name that it was a Catholic house, but the sight of the elderly nun opening the door in her black-and-white habit sent me immediately back to Birdhouse Lodge, and I had a sudden urge to turn and run. I looked down at my trunk, which the taxi driver had left at my feet, and knew I didn’t have any choices.
“I was hoping you’d have a room available,” I said quietly.
“Come in, dear,” she said. “I’m Sister Dorothy, come and sit in the parlor and we’ll talk.”
I did as she instructed and, once I was seated, she sat across from me.
“Now, dear, it’s thirty-five dollars a month, you get your own room, shared bathrooms, three meals a day and maid service to change your sheets once a week. You can do your washing in the laundry room. This is a women’s-only residence, no men whatsoever. Those who disobey the rules will be asked to leave.”
I nodded.
“Do you have your three references for admission and a doctor’s letter showing you’re in good health?”
“No.” I shook my head, a new dread creeping through me. “I didn’t know I needed any of that.”
“Oh, yes, dear, we can’t let just anyone in off the street. We have to think about the health and safety of our residents. Would you like to come back tomorrow when you have your letters gathered?”
“No,” I said, suddenly desperate. It was already late afternoon; where was I going to go if I couldn’t stay here? Ruthie’s house, I supposed, but she was so pregnant and her apartment so cramped, and I could hardly lug this trunk all over town. I was exhausted, physically and mentally. All I wanted to do was be shown to my room and allowed to sleep for a hundred days. I spoke before an idea had fully formed. “If I can get the reference letters, doctor’s note and the money by this evening, could I stay here?”
“Well, yes, we have a room available, but it’s already quite late.”
“May I just leave the trunk here until I return? I promise I’ll be back before eight o’clock.”
Though it was the last place I wanted to go, I hailed a taxi and headed to the New Amsterdam Theatre. I couldn’t bear facing the girls and Ziegfeld himself, all of them now knowing that the wedding had been called off just days before I was supposed to walk down the aisle, but I had no choice.
I took the elevator up to Ziegfeld’s office and mercifully didn’t see any of the girls on my way in.
“Miss Shine,” Mrs. Parham said. “What a shock, I mean what a surprise. I was so sorry—”
“It’s a bit of an emergency,” I said, cutting her off before she could say any more. “Is he in?”
“Let me check, dear.”
In my sad new circumstances, I was becoming everyone’s “dear,” and it stung.
A few moments later, Mr. Ziegfeld opened his office door and nodded for me to come in, but not before six young girls who looked as though they couldn’t have been more than fifteen walked out, all rosy, flushed cheeks and giggles. Surely not, I thought. They’d have to be at least eighteen to be cast.
“Miss Shine,” he said with those same puppy-dog eyes his secretary had given me. “I was saddened to hear your news,” he said as he closed the door behind me.
“Yes, thank you.” I nodded, looking down to the floor. I hadn’t prepared myself to speak of what had happened. Just the thought of Archie brought tears to my eyes; I knew I would fall apart if I had to speak his name.
“But you see, your role has already been recast, Miss Shine,” he said matter-of-factly.
“It’s what?” I said, looking at him directly for the first time. I hadn’t planned to speak to him about returning to the show either, not yet, anyway. I needed some time to get myself settled, set up a place to live and mentally prepare myself to face an audience and the girls again. But once all of that was straightened out, I had planned to come back.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I never could have predicted such a change of heart. I had to think of future shows, and we’ve just completed extensive auditions to cast the upcoming season,” he said, returning to his desk chair and resting his elbows on the desk as if to let me know he had work to get on with. “Contracts have been signed.”
“But I was your star in the Frolic, don’t you want me back for that, at least?”
He shrugged. “We have a new star.”
“Who?” I asked rather loudly, shocked that this could all transpire so quickly. But he didn’t dignify my outburst with a response. His face remained expressionless. It took me back to that night in the car—when after refusing his advances, I’d stared at him, trying to get a glimpse of what would happen next. This time I knew there was nothing I could say or do to change his mind.
“Well, that is disappointing, but it’s not the reason I came,” I said, eager to mask my vulnerability. “I was hoping you could write me a letter of recommendation for the Saint Agnes Residence. I need it today so I can stay there tonight. I would also like to ask Howie for a letter if he’s here, and I need a doctor’s note, so I was hoping I could ask the stage doctor for a letter.”
Ziegfeld looked exasperated. “It’s already five o’clock.”
“If I don’t have these letters, I won’t have a place to sleep tonight,” I said. “And if you could possibly not mention that I was a performer, rather state that I worked at the theater, perhaps as an assistant or secretary, I would appreciate it.” I looked to the ground, the humiliation in asking for this almost too much to take. I wondered how many times he’d seen his biggest stars fall from grace. I wondered if he even cared. To him I was just one of hundreds of women who would pass through this theater.
“I’ll have Mrs. Parham take care of these letters for you, but it might take a while, you can wait outside her office.”
“Thank you,” I said, and as I turned to walk out of his office, I felt a wave of desperation come over me, a sudden realization that this might be the last time I’d set foot in the New Amsterdam. I abruptly turned back toward Ziegfeld, who was walking me out of his office, and found myself just inches from him. I placed my hand on his arm and let it run down to his hand, where I stopped and squeezed. “I appreciate your help,” I said, looking up at him. He pulled his arm away, and I suddenly felt sick at what I’d done in a moment of hopelessness. I quickly turned again and hurried out the door, stunned that I could feel even lower than when I had walked in.
“Oh, and Miss Shine…,” he said.
“Yes.” I felt wretched but forced myself to perk up slightly. Maybe he’d had a change of heart about the show.
“Best of luck to you.”
Having sat in humiliation for what felt like hours while waiting on the letters, I returned, exhausted, to the residence and was at last allowed a room. I tried to stay in bed. A week would not have been long enough. But the nuns knocked on everyone’s doors early for breakfast. They wanted doors open, they wanted to peek inside and be sure there were no visitors of the opposite sex, no funny business going on. Most of the women were secretaries and were up and off to work early. Lying in bed with the sheets over your head was not encouraged, so on the third day I dressed and went to the parlor room, where I wrote out a telegram, then walked to the post office to deliver it.
DEAR ALBERTO STOP
I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK TO YOUR EUROPEAN BOOKER STOP
I NEED TO FIND WORK AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AND CAN TRAVEL STOP
I AM STAYING AT THE SAINT AGNES RESIDENCE IN NEW YORK STOP
YOUR FRIEND STOP
OLIVE
The next day, a messenger boy delivered a telegram to the residence.
MIA CARA OLIVE STOP
MY BOOKER HAS YOUR NAME BUT SHOWS ARE BOOKED A YEAR IN ADVANCE STOP
I WOULD LIKE HE MEET YOU IN THE SPRING IN NEW YORK STOP
WE MEET TOGETHER STOP
PRENDITI CURA DI TE STOP
ALBERTO
After that, I had to force myself to get out of bed. I knew I needed to find work so I could pay my way, but my head felt so heavy, I wanted to close my eyes any chance I could get. All day, every day, I was pining for Archie and kept wondering what he was doing, if he was still at the camp, if he had gone back to Cincinnati, if he was in Manhattan. I briefly considered asking at the Plaza if he was in residence, but what was the point? They wouldn’t reveal that information for one thing, and even if he was there, then what? I couldn’t go back now. Nothing had changed. I’d still lied to him, backed him into a corner without his even knowing, and on top of that, I’d publicly humiliated him. I’d called off the wedding and then I’d left him with the dirty work of letting the guests know that it was over, that they should cancel their travel plans. I imagined there were some he couldn’t reach, some already en route whom he had to face and possibly even host. Before all this I’d been riddled with guilt and anxiety, but this feeling that I’d hurt him, abandoned him without warning and then made him be the one to face the burden and humiliation of announcing it publicly, it was horrible. I’d forced him to despise me, and I’d sealed my fate.
I wanted it to go away, all of it, the way I felt, the light through the curtains, the noises of other people speaking. I couldn’t stand any of it. I wanted to be numb. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to never wake up.
The worst of it was that I didn’t really understand what I had done or why I had done it.
But those nuns kept knocking.
“Breakfast!” one of them bellowed as she knocked and then opened the door a few inches. “Breakfast,” I heard her say again as she moved on to the next door. If I wasn’t up and dressed and down for breakfast, she’d be back to throw the door wide open. “This is no place for lollygaggers,” she’d said the previous day. So I got up, went down for breakfast—or coffee, since it was all I could stomach—and then walked around the block a few times until the secretaries had scurried off to work and I could return to my room, where they’d leave me alone for a while. I walked slowly, the collar of my mink turned up and pulled around my face. The coat was far too wintry for a crisp day in early September, but I didn’t care. I wanted to hide.
A newsboy at the corner was waving a paper as I approached. “Stocks recoup as bulls again rule market!” he shouted, calling out the headline far too loudly. “Read all about it. Sensational gains!”
I thought back to the conversation with Alberto on the train when he’d read out Roger Babson’s warning that an economic crash was coming, and he’d said that no one would go to the theater if that happened. Babson had obviously been wrong, and so had Alberto. Archie had said it was all horsefeathers and he was right. The thought of him made my stomach twist. It was hard to swallow; just thinking of him made my eyes tear up.
“Five hundred bottles of liquor seized on Bay State Veterans train!”
I looked at him and saw the look of desperation in his eyes. “Two cents, miss, read all about it. The New York Times, just two cents.”
When he saw me feeling around in my pocket for change, he tried diligently to make the sale with whatever other news he could recall. “Typhoid outbreak under control,” he said. “Water shortages loom.”
I handed him two cents, and he gave me the paper and immediately began selling to other passersby, clearly not wanting to miss a second of selling time.
Back in my room, I sat on the bed and mindlessly turned the pages of the paper.
78-YEAR-OLD MICHIGAN GRANDMOTHER CHARGED WITH BOOTLEGGING IS KILLED TRYING TO FLEE JAIL. Absurd, I thought, then went to the next one. And that’s when I saw it, a small article on page thirty-one.
HE LIKES CINCINNATI, SHE LIKES MANHATTAN; CARMICHAEL AND SHINE PART WAYS
The wedding is off for businessman Archibald Carmichael and chorus girl Olive Shine after a blowup at his summer house, the Pines, in the Adirondacks.
Sister-in-law Edna Carmichael, who spent time with them at their camp this summer, said she had an opportunity to observe Miss Shine’s “unusual way of doing things. Most of the guests she invited were broke,” said Carmichael. “She had a penchant for high-class bohemians whom she fed and clothed, and she acted as if she already ruled the place. She spent money like an empress, drank excessively and used outrageous language even in the presence of guests.” She added, “It’s no surprise that my brother-in-law eventually saw that they were not suited.”
Mr. Carmichael is said to be returning to his hometown of Cincinnati, where he will reside, and plans to reunite with former fiancée, Louise Moyer.
I stared at the small rectangle in horror. I read it over and over again, fixating on that last sentence. This was horrible. I couldn’t believe how much hurt and insult could come from one tiny three-inch column. How could this happen so fast? How could he go back to someone he didn’t even love? My heart was beating fast, and I could barely breathe. I crumpled the page into a ball and threw it across the room, then fell onto the bed, sobbing into my ink-stained hands, realizing for the first time the magnitude of what I’d done and how permanent it was.
There was a knock at my door. I put the pillow over my head. Another knock, louder now.
“Miss Shine?”
I checked the clock—it was two P.M. Another knock.
I threw the covers back and stomped to the door. “It’s the middle of the afternoon, I’ve had breakfast, I don’t want lunch,” I shouted. “I don’t have a job to go to. I’m not a secretary. What do you want me to do, go and sit on a park bench until the others come back? Can’t you leave me alone?”
It was the young one this time, Sister Theresa, slight and mousy, wearing wire-rimmed glasses. She stood there looking shocked, and I felt terrible all over again. I hadn’t expected it to be her. I’d seen her around the house, talking to the other residents, and she had seemed to be quite sweet. Not that I’d spoken to her, but she’d always seemed accommodating, cheerful. I’d even wondered if she envied those girls in their day dresses heading out into the city.
“You have a visitor in the parlor,” she said quietly.
For a second my heart jumped. What if it was Archie? And then it sank. Why would it be? I took one look at myself in the mirror. I looked gaunt, my skin was grey, my hair looked as if it had been glued to my head. I had dark shadows under my eyes. I didn’t care. I put on a cardigan and walked downstairs.
Ruthie was leaning back in an armchair. She looked uncomfortably large.
“Olive,” she said sympathetically as soon as she caught sight of me. I could have kept on walking. I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t want to see anyone, but I forced myself to go in.
“Hi, Ruthie,” I said.
“How are you?”
“As well as can be expected. Aren’t you supposed to be having that baby soon?”
“Two more weeks, apparently,” she said, looking drained. “Listen, Olive, I’ve come to apologize. I feel terrible, I haven’t been able to sleep since I heard the news. I gave you bad advice and I feel awful, just awful about it.” The tears welled up in her eyes.
“What are you talking about?”
She looked at me, distraught. “This is all my fault, I told you to tell him”—she cupped one hand around her mouth and whispered—“about the baby. And now you’re here,” she continued, “at a boardinghouse, alone. I’m so sorry, it’s the pregnancy, it’s making me not think straight.”
I waved my hands. “Oh, God, Ruthie, stop, stop, stop.” This was all so exhausting—everything I did created problems I didn’t anticipate for people I loved. “None of this is your fault.”
“Of course it is.”
“I didn’t tell him. I didn’t tell him about the baby, and I didn’t tell him I can’t have any more children.”
“What?”
“I couldn’t do it,” I said. “I knew how his whole family back home was desperate for him to become a father, to carry on the family name. I knew that was what he wanted too, so there was no point. He might have asked me to stay, but he would have regretted it later. I would have ruined his life, crushed his hopes and dreams. If we’d married, I would have been a constant disappointment to him, a letdown, and I don’t want to be that to anyone. I’d rather be alone for the rest of my life than know that I was one big disappointment. It’s bad enough being that to my family.”
Ruthie sat back and seemed to take it all in, to understand, but then she shook her head. “But he wouldn’t have to know, Olive. Some people can’t have children. And he could accept that if he had you. He wouldn’t need to know about the cause.”
“But I would! I would know. And our life together would rest on a lie. You’re right, he might feel sorry for me if he didn’t know the truth, even sad for me, but I wouldn’t deserve his sympathy. You said yourself I had to tell him! That’s the trap I’m in. Even if I did tell him, he might think he could accept that, but he’d regret it, and I can’t knowingly cause him anything but happiness.”
She knew me, and she was watching me, her eyes wide with regret, knowing I couldn’t live like that.
“I think about that poor baby now,” I went on. “All the time I think of her, where she is, who took her in, what she looks like. She’d be two. I just think, What was it all for? For me to end up sitting here, alone, back with the nuns?”
“Oh, Olive. What are you going to do now?”
“Ziegfeld doesn’t want me, so go back to that agent Moses Sherman, I suppose, see if he can find me some work. But nothing’s going to pay the way Ziegfeld did. I guess I should try to get used to living here because I don’t know how I’m ever going to afford anything else.”
Ruthie shook her head and sighed. “We were on top of the world, you and me, not too long ago.”
“You still are,” I said. “I’m the only one who’s made a mess of things. You never wanted to stay in the show, you always dreamed of this.”
She nodded and smiled. “We’re going to look at buying a house in Westport after the baby’s born—you know, have a little more space.”
“You’re going to make a real good mother, Ruthie,” I said, feeling a pang of loss at the thought of her moving away, even if it was just outside the city, with a husband and baby and a house. Everything I never thought I wanted suddenly looked quite beautiful.
“I’m sure Moses will find a new show for you,” she said. “Or you could talk to Texas.”
“The nightclub hostess?”
“Yes, Texas Guinan, have you heard about her new place? Eadie went on to make a heck of a lot of money with her at the El Fey before it shut down. Your father isn’t going to like it, so don’t go inviting him to a late night show.” She laughed halfheartedly. “But it’d get you back on your feet.”
I nodded. “It’s not a terrible idea, I suppose.”
“You’ll work it out somehow, Olive, you always do.”