Victory Garden

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The first time I saw him I wasn’t thinking of verdigris eyes that only smiled, of a fulfilled life that understood love, of glee-filled laughter or soul-filled piano music. The first time I saw him, I was thinking about vaudeville.

It was April 1917 when my father brought me to a vaudeville theater off-Broadway—a dark, gas-lit room that didn’t know electric lighting was the vogue. The previous audience was leaving, a collection of working-class families, nursing mothers, young people out for an evening of cheap entertainment, and children, many children, making room for the evening patrons who listened for the scoop on the acts. Houdini had played there, and on their way out the audiences raved. Occasionally, an outstanding act would rise from beneath the rubble of boring, badly sung songs or lazy, badly stepped dances, though the problem with vaudeville, as with most entertainment, was that audiences were so used to seeing the bad that the bad began to look good. Still, they listened for some clue about who was to appear that night, and the audiences gladly paid their nickels and dimes in hopes of accidentally sitting in on a quality show.

My father showed his press credentials to the usher taking tickets at the door, and we were shown to seats in the center of the third row. As we squeezed ourselves between some rambunctious children, my father explained why he had to see this show.

“You see, Rosie,” he said, his slate-gray eyes that matched my own gleaming in the gas light, “yesterday this young man pushes his way past Beatrice into my office. ‘Mr. Scofield,’ the kid says, ‘I’m Max Bell, and I’m gonna let you in on an act that’s taking the world by storm.’

“The kid sticks a stogie thicker than three of his fingers into his mouth and slaps a black scrapbook on my desk. He opens the book to show me photographs and newspaper clippings from some vaudeville. ‘My brothers and I work together in an act called the Five Bell Brothers,’ the kid says. ‘I want you should look at these reviews. Good reviews we’ve got, lots of them, and audiences all over the country who come to see us whenever we’re in town. We’ve been playing the small-time circuits for years, but we’re ready for the Big Time.’”

The cerise curtains went up and the first act of acrobats filled the stage. My father lowered his voice to a whisper.

“‘We could get to the Big Time if we had the right reviews,’ Max said. ‘You’re a respected man from the New York Times, Mr. Scofield. One good word from you and people will listen. We want you should see our act tomorrow night, then give us a write up in your column, one that will get us into the Big Time. Well? Hells bells! What do you say?’”

My father laughed. “How could I refuse such a request?”

He glanced at the brightly colored acrobats tumbling across the stage while two men in court jester attire juggled apples and oranges, then flaming watermelons painted like the Stars and Stripes for a finale. My father shook his head as if he didn’t care for what he saw. This first act was known as the doormat act, the one that filled the stage while the latecoming audience arrived—an unwelcome task.

I wasn’t impressed, either, and I watched the crowd, mostly working-class, mostly immigrant, loud and uninterested in the acrobats tumbling or the jugglers juggling. These were faces of people tired from working long hours for little wages, who wanted to forget their days in song, dance, and laughter, who wanted to see themselves reflected back in a way they could take with them when they returned down the unlit alleys to their homes where they escaped until the sunlight brought another welcomeless day. If their nickels and dimes bought a respite from what waited for them outside, they walked away happy.

The acrobats and jugglers finished their opening number, disappearing into the wings. The loud-chatting audience hardly noticed that the curtain dropped. A moment later the curtain rose to reveal six ballerinas, and whoops and hollers came from those inclined to show their appreciation that way. The ballerinas toe danced in tulle and ribbons of red, white, and blue while the marching tones of “Yankee Doodle” rose from the five musicians in the orchestra pit.

My father watched the ballerinas twirling their American flags and he grimaced. “President Wilson is intent on declaring war,” he said. “Now he wants to convince the country that joining the war in Europe is the only way we can preserve democracy.”

“At first he was reluctant to send American troops into a European war,” I said. “When we were in Washington we realized he changed his mind. Now he sees America as the savior of all nations.”

“He’s trying to inspire the Patriotism to promote his cause—100% Americanism.” My father shook his head as he looked at the red, white, and blue streamers dangling from the stage. “It looks like vaudeville has already caught the Patriotism.”

“The Patriotism. You make it sound like the plague.”

“You wait and see.”

We watched the dancers lead each other off the stage, arm in arm, toes in sync. The curtain went down and up again and the emcee introduced the next act—a dramatic skit with men in tights and ladies in skirts and bodices. Then, according to the emcee, was the first corker of the night, the first big punch of the show. The audience in its collective glee leaned forward, clapping and hollering. No longer interested in the sight of the audience or the act on the stage, I leaned back against my seat and closed my eyes, trying to ignore the snickers and hoots from those who were also bored but less shy about showing it. I tried to forget how enclosed I felt sitting amongst so many people. I didn’t want to feel claustrophobic the way I did whenever I felt surrounded, as if there were no way out. I didn’t like feeling trapped. Suddenly, I was warm and tired, and I fell asleep despite the chaos around me.

I was startled when my father shook me awake. I opened my eyes to see the audience filing into the aisles, chattering excitedly about what they saw.

“You missed the Five Bell Brothers,” my father said, wiping away his happy tears. He took my hand and led me from the seats. “Come on, Rosie. I have to meet those boys. That was some of the best comedy I’ve seen in years.”

I followed my father to the side door where he showed his press credentials. We stepped into the backstage where the glitter flashed like a kaleidoscope. I wanted to shield my eyes from the illuminations of the costumes, the jewelry, the brilliant smiles. Mostly the smiles were big and toothy, the forced kind you see when the inclination isn’t to smile at all but to bolt out the door, away from the crowds that demanded, often impolitely, to be entertained for their money. But there was an ease of camaraderie amongst the entertainers as they joked and laughed with their arms around each other. They seemed comfortable together in New York, as they probably were in Kalamazoo, Wichita, San Francisco, and wherever else their vaudeville circuit brought them.

My father found an elegant, silver-haired gentleman carrying a ruby-studded walking stick and asked where he could find Max Bell and his brothers. The gentleman gibbered joyfully in a language neither my father nor I understood. The man gestured for us to follow him, and with his walking stick he cut through the cigarette smoke and pushed aside the heated bodies, the props, and the posters until we arrived in an unventilated room where some of the performers were intent on a poker game. Suddenly, a dark-haired young man wearing a white duck suit, a thick black cigar hanging from his lips, stood and pointed at another player.

“Hells bells! Pay up already, will you?”

My father smiled. “That’s Max.” I loved it when something caught the magic in my father’s eyes and made him light up pink like the wide-eyed boy he still could be. The loss of my mother to consumption, the political corruption of Tammany Hall, the fall of Theodore Roosevelt from the heights of political prowess, the rise of women and children sweatshop labor, the city congestion where everyone who drove a motor car thought he was the reason for the roads, with robbery, rape, and murder on the rise—all of it meant my father was no longer as serene as he had once been. I loved him for his concern for others, and I loved him even more for his desire to spoil the follies of mankind in his newspaper columns. I was grateful to whoever these Five Bell Brothers were for whatever they did to grant him this time away from the worries of the world.

Max Bell approached us, winking at my father. “Lie to you, did I, Mr. Scofield?”

“You did not,” my father answered.

“Entertained you, did we?”

“Yes, you did, my boy. Yes, you did.”

“Then you’re going to write a good review for us, right?”

“You’ll be on the Big Time if I have anything to say about it.”

Max nodded while he looked me up and down. “You know her?” Max nodded in my direction.

“Only her whole life.”

Max smiled a polite smile for my father, a different smile for me, then disappeared. As my father and I turned to leave, our path was blocked by a human obstacle course. There, on their knees, gesticulating with open arms toward me, their faces caught between instantaneous love and playful admiration, were five young men in white duck suits, including Max, who had to be brothers.

I was abashed by such rapt attention from these men I didn’t know, even if they were pleasant looking. I didn’t know what to do or how to respond, so I stared with an embarrassed grin at waves of dense, unwieldy hair that ranged from chestnut to sepia and large, amused eyes that ranged from verdigris-green to gray-blue. My next reaction was to ignore them, but there was no ignoring the Five Bell Brothers. The less I tried to notice them the wider their gesticulating, and the wider their gesticulating the less I tried to notice them. When I thought I would explode from distress, one of the brothers stepped closer, inspecting me.

“Hey!” he said, his voice pleasant and mellow. “You’re the dame who slept through our whole act!”

My cheeks flushed and my stomach burned. “Why, yes,” I said.

“Don’t worry about it, though you’re the only one I’ve ever known to sleep through a vaudeville except the performers.”

“I don’t know,” said Max. “After all, you did sleep during our act right through to the end.” He turned to his brothers. “I think she owes us a better apology than that.”

“You took that much notice of me?” I asked.

“Certainly,” Max said. “I always notice the pretty dames in the audience.”

“Yah,” said the brother who had first spoken, “especially the unconscious ones. He’s met some of his best dates that way.”

Max leaned close to me. “Say, you wouldn’t like to meet up after the show and…”

“What about Mary Lou?” asked another brother.

“Mary Who?”

“Not Mary Who. Mary Lou. You know, the poor girl who thinks you’re going to marry her one day.”

“You mean Mary Boo Hoo.”

“That’s the one.”

The brothers were no more than overgrown boys. At first I found their comfortable mannerisms bothersome, though in a matter of moments, touched by their friendliness, I found them endearing. They were hurricanes, the Bell Brothers, five distinct, individual hurricanes, blowing and huffing about simultaneously, encircling and encompassing everyone around them. The smoke from their cigars or cigarettes permeated everything. Their voices, though some were deeper or smoother or louder or slower, were everywhere. They talked at the same time, smoked at the same time, laughed at the same time, flirted at the same time.

Max called to his brothers. “Hey, boys! I forgot to introduce you to Mr. Scofield here. He’s the nice man who’s going to write the review that’s going to get us into the Palace.”

“That big one in England?” asked a younger brother.

Max shook his head. “You’ll have to excuse my brother Jacob. He fell on his head when we were in Pittsburgh.”

“I didn’t fall. I was dropped.”

Max looked sideways at his brother. “I haven’t introduced you to my herd here, Mr. Scofield. Bell boys to attention! Roll call!” The brothers popped into line, army-style. “Here we are in the order of appearance that pleased Mother but surprised the hell out of Pop. Stuart!”

Stuart took a step forward. “I’m the oldest and Stuart is next in line. He talks almost as fast as I do except I’ve had two more years practice at it. He tells jokes in the act, and he even sings in his very own key. Adam!”

Adam was the brother who had first recognized me as the dame who slept through their act. “Adam plays the piano. I think he has another talent, but I can’t tell you what it is.”

The first thing I noticed when I looked at Adam Bell was his eyes—wide, green, and smiling. Stepping in front of his brothers, Adam bowed in a genteel manner toward my father and tipped his derby toward me, winking, not a leering, wicked wink but an amiable one, almost brotherly in its understanding.

“Jacob!”

The smallest of the brothers, Jacob nodded from where he stood. “He sings and plays the clarinet. We’d put him in the comedy act except he’s never strung more than four words together in a sentence. Then there’s David.” Max pointed to the youngest of the brothers who looked no more than 15. “He’s not too bright, but he sings well and carries our luggage wherever we go.”

“I’m doing this until I can get a real job,” David said.

“Hey,” said Stuart, “this is a real job.”

Adam laughed. “Yah,” he said. “Too bad it doesn’t pay real money.”

“Does this line of work pay well?” my father asked.

“Let’s put it this way,” Max said. “We don’t know if we’re going to sleep in a hotel room until we see how much dough we pulled in that night. We make our real money at the poker table, or pool, whichever we can find action at first, except for Jakey there who’d rather play with himself.”

“I play solitaire,” Jacob said.

“That’s one way to play with yourself,” said Max.

“Hey!” said Adam. “There’s a lady here.”

Max bowed. “I beg of you a hundred pardons, Miss Scofield. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“It’s all right, Mr. Bell,” I said. “I’m not so easily offended.”

My father began to question Max about the dollars and cents side of small-time vaudeville, to which Max answered there were few dollars to be had and even less sense. The conversation turned to the next poker game, and my father, who was known to sit in for a few hands now and again, was interested in where and when. Behind me I noticed a sign that warned the performers to make certain their acts appealed to the widest audiences:

Don’t say ‘slob’ or ‘son of a gun.’

Don’t say ‘holy gee.’

Don’t say ‘hell,’ ‘damn,’ ‘devil,’ ‘cockroach,’ or ‘spit.’ Any act found uttering anything sacrilegious or suggestive will be immediately closed. It is worse to offend than to have no talent.

Adam Bell stood beside me, careful to blow his cigarette smoke away from my face. “I guess we’re safe,” he said. “We don’t offend and we have no talent.”

“My father thinks differently,” I said.

Adam crunched his cigarette beneath his boot and leaned against the wall, his hands in his pockets. “When you said you weren’t so easily offended you meant it.”

“I did.”

He smiled, a huge, pleasing smile. “Yah, I could tell. I knew I liked you even if you did sleep through our act.” He nodded his head at the sign on the wall. “Can you believe how closely they watch us? Say one wrong thing and you’re closed out of that circuit for months.”

“Have the Five Bell Brothers ever been closed out for saying the wrong thing?”

“Once or twice—a month, that is, always because of Max. He’s a fast talker, all right, which helps to get us gigs but it also gets us closed out.”

Adam excused himself and returned to his brothers. I left for home on my father’s arm without understanding what had happened.