Heaven Is to Your Left Read online

  “Mothers aren’t easy, are they?”

  I laughed. “If only you knew mine.”

  “Tell me. Let’s go sit at the table and you tell me. We’ll swap mother stories.”

  When I turned to step off the dance floor, my innards froze like Richard’s mother. The tables were only half full and it was already past ten on a Saturday night. It should be jammed by now with customers in formal wear clamoring for their waiters. A few waiters stood at attention at their stations, waiting for someone to serve. Richard guided me to a large round table where we would all gather soon for dinner and the show. He helped me into a chair, which was actually needed because of all the silk and lace gathered around my waist and legs cascading in a flare down toward the floor. “Do you want something to eat?” Richard asked.

  “No, I’ll wait for the others, but I’d love a drink.”

  “A sidecar like my wife. Right?”

  “Yes. No! I’ll have a Manhattan.”

  Richard lit a Marlboro and gave our drink order to the waiter. He leaned toward me. “So, tell me about your mother. I’m betting she can’t outdo mine for being a pain in the, the . . . neck.”

  I laughed, knowing what word he really wanted to use. “Well,” I began, “my mother used to hear voices that told her I was a demon trying to kill her.”

  His brow wrinkled. “I think you’re going to win.”

  “She chased me around the house with a kitchen knife once. She didn’t mean it. She thought she was protecting herself from a demon. Me.”

  “You’re a lot more generous than I would be. What’d you do?”

  “Ran. My father tackled her to the ground and grabbed the knife away. It only happened once.”

  “Only!”

  “It left an impression, though.”

  “I would think so.”

  “I think the worst was when she locked me out of the house for the whole night. That happened a lot.”

  “How old were you?”

  The orchestra singer was singing “What is This Thing Called Love?”

  “It happened off and on from age eight to twelve. When my father was working the all-night shift in a bakery, I’d sleep under the porch, and when he came home he’d find me there and know that Mom had had another one of her spells. He’d feel bad and take me to Finnegan’s, this diner where my grandma was a waitress. Grandma wasn’t there in the early morning, so Dad and I could get away with having strawberry ice cream for breakfast.”

  The waiter placed our drinks in front of us and we each took a sip.

  “Didn’t your father do anything to stop this?”

  “What could he do? He had to work. Our neighbors were terrified of her. Sometimes Mrs.

  Boyd from next door would find me under the porch and take me into her house. I liked Mrs. Boyd. Her son, Danny, was my beau throughout my childhood. We came to New York together.”

  “Where’s Danny now?”

  “I’m not sure. I read a few years ago that he was getting married to a girl from our town, but I don’t know where they settled.”

  “He should’ve married you.”

  My mind flashed back to the time when I found Danny naked in Max’s apartment. “I don’t think that would’ve worked out.”

  Richard lit another Marlboro and shook his head. “You’d make someone a terrific wife,” he said seriously. “But you don’t want to get married, do you?”

  “Not really.”

  “I’ve never met a girl like you. So, in charge, so confident. I guess I should stop introducing you to those Omaha businessmen, hmm?”

  “I think so. I never dreamt of marriage as a child like I’ve heard other girls do. When I was eight, I decided I was going to do something completely, absolutely wonderful, but I didn’t know what that something was.”

  “But having children wasn’t it?”

  “No. Do you think I’m awful?”

  “Not after what you’ve done for Juliana. Is helping Juliana the completely, absolutely wonderful something you wanted to do?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never really asked myself that, but . . .” Tears filled my eyes. I tried hard not to let them fall, but they did anyway. I felt like I was losing everything I’d ever worked for, that my whole life was about to end.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” I rummaged through my purse. “Where is that handkerchief?”

  “Here take mine.” He took his from his inside pocket.

  I blotted my eyes. “I never get like this. I don’t know why, uh . . .”

  “Perhaps it’s because Juliana is about to have one of the greatest successes of her career and it’s all because of you and that eight-year-old girl who dreamt of doing a completely, absolutely wonderful something.”

  We smiled at each other, not sure how to move on from this moment that was warm, but awkward too. “Well . . .” I said, averting my eyes from his. “Look, Juliana’s still dancing with Max.”

  The young singer was singing “Begin the Beguine.” A circle had formed around Juliana and Max. No one could not watch them; they had become one dancer. Diners sitting behind their tables slowly rose to get a better view. Max and Juliana had no awareness of being scrutinized. They were lost in the music and in the perfect movement of their bodies completely in tune with each other. It was like they knew exactly what the other would do through some supernatural means. The two of them invented moves right on the spot, neither getting lost. They were simply having fun, oblivious to what surrounded them; it was the kind of fun they might have had when they were both new to each other. My heart pounded with longing watching Juliana’s heels move in perfect time to every move Max made, never missing a beat. I heard a few whispered “oohs” and “aahs” coming from the audience when Max swung her out and twirled her back into his chest. She was sensuous as she moved her hips, walking toward him. Their bodies pressed together and then out again. At the end, Max bent Juliana over in the most graceful dip I’d ever seen. As they remained in the pose, gazing into each other’s eyes, they seemed like a work of art created by a long-ago master. My hormones raged within me. It took all my power to stop me from running up on stage and grabbing her. I looked to my right and saw Richard’s eyes riveted on Juliana. I thought he and I might be having the same the struggle. I didn’t like having that in common with him. When Max rose from the dip, bringing Juliana close to him, the whole audience applauded. Max and Juliana looked genuinely surprised that anyone had been watching them. They held hands, laughing, as they made a silly bow.

  The singer began again with “Cheek to Cheek.” Max encouraged everyone to dance and stop staring at Juliana and him. He and Juliana danced to this faster tune.

  “I’ve never met Max’s wife,” Richard said. “Do you know her?”

  “Max isn’t married.”

  He turned back toward the stage. “Really? I knew he wasn’t long ago when I first met him, but surely I thought by now . . . A handsome, successful—”

  “Never found the right woman,” I hurried to say.

  “Oh. Shall we join them?”

  “Who?”

  “Juliana and Max. Up there.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Let’s.”

  As we moved toward the dance floor, Giorgio, the doorman, came running in, his gray ringlets bouncing. “Missa Al, here. For you.” He pushed an envelope into my hand. “I go quick. Watcha dah door.” Giorgio was a good guy. We never caught him in some corner grabbing a smoke. We could depend on him to be standing proud at our door, no matter what the weather. He’d been with us since the beginning.

  “What is it,” Richard asked. “A welcome home card?”

  “I have no idea.”

  I opened the envelope and slid out a card with a cartoon of a duck in a French beret on the front. The duck was painting a picture of the Eiffel tower on his easel. Across the top in script it read, “You inspire me.” Jimmy again? No, he couldn’t write like that.

  “That’s a funny thing to get. Op
en it and see who sent it.”

  I was about to flip open the card and see what the joke was when suddenly—I knew who sent it and my blood went cold. I shoved it back into the envelope as I looked up to see Juliana and Max dancing. “Uh, Richard, I don’t mean to be rude, but I just remembered who might’ve sent it. An old friend. And I think I should read it—”

  “Oh, of course. You want to read it alone. How thoughtless of me. Go ahead I’ll just . . .” His eyes were focused on Max and Juliana.

  I ran toward my office but stopped when I saw Bart. He was dressed in his white tuxedo, jaunting over to the ringside table. “Hey, Al,” he threw at me, waving as he passed by. I turned to see him handshaking and backslapping the mob guys. I knew Bart was a lowlife, but I’d never connected him with those types. Then, I remember that threat he sang to me the day I fired him. “There’ll come a time when you’ll regret it.” I hurried off to my office, snapped on the light, and closed the door.

  Standing at my desk, the card shaking in my hand, I took a few deep breaths. I pulled the card from its envelope and opened it. On the inside, written in block print, it read, “Welcome home. See the gift I left on your desk.” I was not surprised by the signature. “Best Regards, Dan Schuyler.” Gift? What gift? I didn’t see anything on my desk. Just the blotter, the dictograph, and my rock paperweight. I lifted the paperweight. There sat a page that had been torn from a book. In the center of the page was a paragraph that had been circled in black ink.

  “Some lesbians manifest pronounced sadistic and psychopathic trends.”

  I opened the bottom drawer of my desk and took out the book, Female Homosexuality. That was the book one of Schuyler’s stooges had left on my desk before I went to Paris. I thumbed through it to see if any pages had been torn out. Toward the end of the book, I saw that page 302 was gone. There was no number on the page I held in my hand, but it lined up with the scraggly edges of the missing 302 perfectly. My heart pounded. He’d been in my office. How had he gotten in while I was only a few feet away talking to Richard? I peered under my desk, threw open the closet door. No Schuyler. How silly. He’d never be so obvious. Maybe it had been one my betrayers! Yes, of course. All three suspects were right outside the door. Was it Bertha? No, Lillian? No! No, it was Bart. He was the type that would hang out with Schuyler.

  I threw the book back in the drawer and walked out of the office. I was careful to lock the door, but that was pretty much like locking up the proverbial horse after . . . well, you know. I hurried over to Richard, who was standing in the back, watching Max and Juliana still dancing. My eyes roamed the room, foolishly looking for Schuyler.

  “Everything all right?” he asked me.

  “Oh, yes, fine.”

  “Max sure is dancing with Juliana a lot tonight. Don’t you think?”

  Chapter Three

  February 1956

  “Al, it’s a mess. A complete mess,” Juliana said into the other end of the phone. She was sitting in a phone booth in a drug store in Philly. “How could you have gotten me into something like this?”

  My breath temporarily shot away from me and I couldn’t respond. Finally, I said—slowly—deliberately, “I didn’t get you into this. Dan Schuyler did.”

  “Of course. I’m just so rattled . . .”

  “At least, I didn’t mean to. I still haven’t figured out which one of my so-called colleagues betrayed—”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter who. It’s done.”

  “It matters to me. Hold on a sec.” I pushed a button on my dictograph. “Lucille.”

  “Jackson!” she squawked at me.

  “Hold all my calls till I tell you different.”

  “Solid!” she said.

  I really had to have a talk with Lucille. Then a thought . . . Could her sudden jive talk be a reason for firing her? I went back to the phone. “Jule, I’m back.” I slipped the earring off my phone ear, so I could hear her better.

  “It’s the play,” she said. “What they’re doing to it. They yanked out three songs yesterday and put in two new ones. We open tomorrow night!”

  “That’s how tryouts are. Lots of changes at the last minute. You’ve had to deal with that in the clubs too.”

  “Never like this. No one seems to know what they’re doing. One of the songs they cut was perfect for my voice. And they still haven’t found a real choreographer yet. They’ve got this kid ballet dancer flying around the stage, and I think he’s supposed to be choreographing—"

  “Paulie Nelson.”

  “Yes. That’s him.”

  “He’s Harry Fielding’s nephew.”

  “Our Harry Fielding, the director?”

  “Of course. Who else?”

  “Well, our Harry Fielding doesn’t seem to trust him.”

  “He doesn’t.”

  “Oh, terrific.”

  “The scuttlebutt around Broadway is when Harry said yes to directing Heaven, he promised his sister he’d give the kid a shot. Harry’s got a good rep around town though, so I don’t think he’ll—”

  “He’s trying to make up for the kid by directing the acting and the dancing. Only he doesn’t know the first thing about being graceful. He’s got us all clomping around the stage like drunken circus elephants.”

  I slapped my hand to my mouth so she couldn’t hear me laughing.

  “Schuyler’s a nervous wreck,” she continued, “and keeps pacing in the back of the rehearsal studio. Why doesn’t he do something besides threaten me?”

  “Has he said anything to you about—you know, in front of other people?”

  “No. He wouldn’t. Almost everyone in the cast belongs to our ‘club.’ He’d be outnumbered.”

  “Maybe that’s it. Tell the others in the cast what he’s doing and—”

  “And what? They’ll defend me against him? I tell them this and you won’t find one single, you know, in the bunch. Except for me, of course, who just committed professional suicide. Al, the stress is softening your brain.”

  “Of course, you’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking. It all just makes me so damn mad. I want to punch someone.”

  “What’s unnerving me is that Schuyler isn’t out hiring a choreographer and a new musical director. He’s supposed to be the producer. When is he going to produce?”

  “I wonder if he’s running out of money?”

  “What? With only half a show? Have you heard anything. I’m in a disaster, aren’t I?”

  “No, no. Harry’ll pull it together.” How could I have said such a thing to her?

  “Yesterday, Schuyler dressed down the juvenile in the cruelest language. This morning the poor kid looked shell-shocked and couldn’t get a note out. And poor book writer, Josh. A delightful boy. This book he’s written is a lot better than the last horror he wrote for me. It’s a really good book. Even you said so. But Schuyler, and Harry too, keep telling him to make these ridiculous changes and the kid won’t stand up to them. They’re ruining his script. I won’t be able to take another” —she whispered— “flop. And if I do . . . flop,” she choked out, “then what will Schuyler do to me?”

  “Well, that might be a way out of this.”

  “Don’t even joke about a thing like that. I fail and Schuyler throws me in the ashcan of life? Then I can go back to abject obscurity where no one gives a darn what I do in the bedroom?”

  “I always care what you do in the bedroom.”

  “Al! What if someone heard you?”

  “Oh. I forgot.” My heartbeat sped up. “The door’s closed. No one can hear through that.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Through the window in my door, I saw Bertha walk by. “I think.”

  “You think?”

  “No. I know. No one can hear through that door.”

  “You’ve got to be careful.”

  “I know. I know. Just concentrate on doing your best. Think about those Copa reviews you got last month. Just think about your voice and—”

  “Can
you come here?”

  “You want me to . . ?” I could practically feel her hand reaching out for me through the phone wires. She never did that before. Never so boldly open, but . . . “Schuyler?”

  “As my manager.”

  “He knows I’m not.”

  She was quiet for a few moments and I waited, listening to her breath, wishing I could touch her. Finally, she said, “They’re predicting a blizzard for tomorrow. Three, four inches of snow. Maybe no one will show up.”

  “You’re gonna be good, Jule. No. Great. You’re going to be great. I know it. I feel it. Get them to put a phone in your dressing room. When the coast is clear, call me here at my office before you go on tomorrow night.”

  I put the phone back in its cradle just as my hand began to shake. Had I reset the privacy button after I spoke to Lucille? I was afraid to look, but . . . It was still open. Heart pounding. Did Lucille listen in?

  We couldn’t go on like this. The strain of being caught, saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing . . . It was too much. Exhausting. I stood outside my office. The door to Max’s office was partially ajar and I could see him in there working. I hadn’t seen him in the Haven office for quite some time, a couple years. Since the beginning when we first opened the Haven, he’d left it pretty much up to me to run. I wondered if he knew just how much stress this show was putting on Juliana; it could ruin her performance. Maybe I should tell him. He could come up with a plan to get her out of the show, away from Schuyler.

  I walked over to his office, poked my head in, and knocked on the open door. “May I?’

  Max nodded, not looking up from his work.

  “Max?” I said to the top of his head. He continued to pour over the papers on his desk, his white shirt open at the neck, his sleeves rolled up. I’d never seen him at the club when he didn’t wear a jacket and a tie. Even during the day. An open briefcase lay on the desk near the telephone. He scribbled something on a pad of paper.