Stage Door Canteen (27 page)

“She’s fantastic, though. I love Peggy Lee. She has that cool little voice. Like vanilla ice cream.”

Annmarie found a dry spot on the roller towel and wiped her hands. “I want to see the movie that just opened at the Radio City Music Hall, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. People are saying it’s really good. Although I can’t imagine Bogart and Ingrid Bergman together.”

Her friend made a face. “I don’t care for Humphrey Bogart. I like somebody really handsome. Like Errol Flynn.”

Jane stepped up to the mirror to comb her hair. “Carmen Thompson says the Canteen is going to put up a Christmas tree. I think Ed Wynn is going to donate the Christmas tree if they can find a place to put it.”

“There isn’t any place to put it,” Annemarie said. “The Canteen just put in more tables and we really don’t have any space. Maybe they can hang it over the dance floor.”

“There isn’t any room over the dance floor, either. Not unless you take down the mirror ball.”

“Well, I hate those red and green Christmas decorations,” the other debutante said, “I would have put in white and silver. That wouldn’t cost any more than the other.”

“Somebody donated the red and green decorations, some firm that makes them. So I guess the canteen has to use them.”

“Hey, have you seen the WAAC captains?” Jane said. “I thought I was seeing things. You know, officers aren’t allowed in the Canteen.”

Elise, who always read the newspapers, said, “Casablanca is getting very good reviews.”

“They’re not WAAC captains, one of them is Inez Robb of INS.” Annmarie gave her hair a final pat. “My father knew her in Washington. They’re war correspondents, it says so on their uniforms.”

“War correspondents? You mean they’re in the canteen to do a story?”

“I don’t know.” Annmarie shrugged. “Aren’t they supposed to be going overseas?”

The door opened and Dina Flaherty came in. While the restroom door was open they heard the crowd outside, noisier than usual. “Would you believe Benny Goodman is playing the Hokey Pokey? Some English sailors asked him for it, and he did it! Can’t you hear them? The whole place has gone crazy.”

There were groans. Jane said, “I wish they’d ban the Hokey Pokey. ‘Put your right foot in, and shake it all about—’”

“Carmen Thompson says for everybody to come out and help,” Dina told them. “Some Marines want to have Benny Goodman play a conga next so they can have a conga line.”

“That’s crazy! Have you ever been in a conga line with Marines? They ought to give you a medal for it!”

Jane held the door open for them. “Listen to that! With all the good music to play, why do they have to ask Benny Goodman for the Hokey Pokey? It’s enough to make you want to throw up.”

“Have you noticed when the British ask for anything, everybody falls all over themselves to give it to them?”

“How about the French or the Russians? Same thing.”

Elise grabbed Annemarie’s arm. “Don’t leave, please! Would you wait a moment and speak to me? Your father knows these war correspondents? Is that the same thing as journalists? They are writers?”

The door swung to. The restroom was suddenly empty.

“For just a moment, will you talk to me, Miss Van Troup?” Elise said. “It’s very important, I need you to explain this to me about the correspondents.”

“Sure, Elise, but I don’t know how well Daddy knows Inez Robb. I think she was covering some big federal trial or something, and he was one of the lawyers.”

“What is this, please? These women journalists are going overseas to Europe to write stories on the war?”

“I don’t know that they’re going to Europe, our armies aren’t in Europe yet, are they? They’re probably going to England. Or maybe North Africa. That’s what all the rumors say.”

“Yes, they will be going to Europe,” Elise said to herself. “They will be writing stories about Europe.”

“Look, if you want to find out, why don’t you go out and introduce yourself? I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t mind telling you what it is they do.”

Her last words addressed the air. Elise was gone. The door of the ladies’ restroom had already swung shut.

In the main room of the Stage Door Canteen, Benny Goodman and his band played a few notes on an ascending scale, the cue they were going to take a break, and put down their instruments. The vocalists, including Peggy Lee, headed for the restrooms or, with the rest of the musicians, took the passageway through the kitchen out the back door into the 44th Street Theater’s alley where they could enjoy a smoke and a breath of cold December night air. Uniformed canteen patrons left the dance floor and made for the food service counters where a line formed.

Ruth McGowan’s Signal Corps sergeant saw her to a table and went to get a cold soft drink. She was able to see now and then through openings in the crowd that Inez Robb was still at the table full of Marines, still talking and taking notes. Evidently Inez had found her story, the kind of feature she did best. The INS reporter had told her that she wasn’t particularly keen on going overseas; not after the reports of ships with American military personnel aboard being torpedoed in the Atlantic. They were going to be crossing in the same way.

I think I’m going to sleep on deck, Inez had declared, I don’t care how cold it is. I wouldn’t get a decent night’s sleep anyway, down a dozen decks in the middle of some boat knowing that I couldn’t get out of there if the Germans decided to fire a torpedo at us. Hell, I’ve seen a million movies about it. You know those ships have watertight doors, don’t you? They close them and shut off people behind them and let them drown so the ship won’t sink.

Ruth had to admit that crossing the Atlantic in a troop ship, in a convoy, was an idea she didn’t particularly want to dwell on. She spent the time while the sergeant was getting Cokes studying the garland of plastic holly and bright red berries that ran around the edge of the canteen’s ceiling. Christmas decorations. The rotating mirror ball over the dance floor that sent sparkling bits of light over all during slow dances, when the lights were dimmed, was trimmed in plastic mistletoe. The Christmas holidays were a little over two weeks away.

It suddenly occurred to Ruth McGowan that she might, with Inez Robb and a couple of thousand soldiers, spend her Christmas in the middle of the cold, bleak, stormy Atlantic Ocean aboard a troop ship dodging German U-Boats.

She was still thinking about it and asking herself, not for the first time in her career, how she had managed to get herself into a job that demanded this sort of death-defying risk just to cover a story, when she saw one of the canteen hostesses approaching her table. This one was an attractive, doe-eyed child with straight, shoulder-length hair and The Look. That fixed gaze that Ruth had learned to identify after years of newspapering, particularly during her stint in the nation’s capital among the members of Congress. The Look meant the person coming toward her was about to announce that he or she had something that they just knew should be written up in a newspaper. A tremendous story. Of the once-in-a-lifetime variety.

She looked around for the tech sergeant to rescue her, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“Oh shit,” she said under her breath.

The Hokey Pokey had finished to raucous applause and laughter. At the request of the group of Marines, Benny Goodman and his band immediately launched into an earsplitting conga. More than half the sweating, breathless crowd gave a loud groan, but nevertheless began forming a line around the dance floor that extended in and out of the tables.

Annmarie van Troup pulled Dina around the end of the milk bar and out of the way. “I can’t believe it.” The debutante fanned herself with a handful of paper napkins. “These things get so rowdy so fast. It was the same way Monday night. Maybe it’s because it’s Christmas. You can’t count last year’s Christmas when everybody was still in a state of shock, trying to cope with the Japs attacking Pearl Harbor.”

Dina reached out and pulled some of the paper napkins from Annmarie’s hand to use to pat her damp face. “I think it’s because a lot of GIs are going overseas. That makes a difference.”

“I think the canteen is a lot crazier than it was before Thanksgiving. My mother keeps asking if everything’s okay. She really can’t get over the Stage Door Canteen being only for enlisted personnel. She keeps asking me if I want to switch to the officers’ club in the St. Regis and be a volunteer there.” She turned to Dina, who was rummaging in the shelves below to find a paper cup. “Don’t you have a boyfriend from the canteen? That cute sergeant who was with the war bond tour?”

Dina drew some water from the soda fountain faucet, enough to fill the paper cup. She drank it, thirstily. “We’re not supposed to have boyfriends, Annmarie, it’s against the rules. I don’t date him, if that’s what you mean.”

“I know that, Dina, I know the rules about dating. But he was totally ga-ga abut you.”

“I have to thank you for passing his note to me. But it’s always the same thing—’When are we going to get together?’ He called me from Miami day before yesterday, wanting me to come down there. He even wanted to send me the money for the train fare.”

They watched the conga line rocking past. It had grown to include Milton Berle and a chorus boy from the Radio City Music Hall who had been bussing the tables.

“The sergeant? What’s he doing in Miami?” Annmarie asked.

“His crew is there on a rest leave. The government has a whole hotel in Miami Beach full of the Air Force. From what Gene says they bring in girls in buses from Miami churches and the ‘Y’ for dances that they have there at the hotel practically every night, and they give them tickets to shows and movies and the nightclubs. Everything is free. The Bomber group has an officer with them who’s writing a story about their B-17 crew. I think he said the Air Force is going to give the story to Life magazine. But he says he hates Miami. All he can talk about is for me to come down there and stay with him. But no fooling around, you know what I mean. He says he’ll put me up at a hotel, even find a chaperone someplace. He calls every night. It’s driving my family crazy.”

“He’s really in love with you.” Annmarie was impressed. “Dina, are you going to do it? Are you going to Miami Beach?”

“Are you kidding? I have a very strict Italian family, they’d kill me! Nobody ever heard of going out of town to visit a guy unless you’re planning to commit a mortal sin. I haven’t even told my mother what he wants me to do. If she found out she’d never let me talk to Gene again. She’d probably disconnect our telephone!”

“But Dina, think about it. Couldn’t your boyfriend talk to your mother and tell her about the chaperone and the other arrangements, and that he was going overseas and this was the last time he’ll be able to see you for a long time? Wouldn’t your mother trust you to go down to Miami Beach if he talked to her and told her about wanting to get engaged?”

Dina looked out over the dancers milling around in the main room of the Canteen now that the conga was over. The Benny Goodman band was putting up their instruments, preparing to take a break. “You know, I don’t want to get engaged. I’ve been taking dancing and singing lessons since I was a little kid, and now I’m in performing arts school, and some of the people there are already auditioning for Broadway and the USO shows going overseas. I’m not going to give that up. Besides, I don’t want to be rushed into anything. Even by somebody I like.”

“But you’re in love with him, aren’t you? The girls here thought he was a doll.”

“He wants to get married. He’s going to get reassigned after Miami and he’s going overseas and he might not come back. That doesn’t seem fair, does it, to send him back into the fighting like that when he’s already been decorated and is a hero and everything?”

The crowd thinned, going back to the tables. Annmarie said, “What’s wrong with Elise? Look, over there, at the table with the war correspondent. Do you see? Maybe we ought to go over there. She’s crying.”

“I really can’t talk to you, kid.” Ruth McGowan searched he crowd for the Signal Corps sergeant, who was evidently stuck at the drink counter. “Look, whatever your story is. I really don’t feel up to taking it on. Why don’t you go somewhere until you calm down? Don’t you know where the ladies’ room is?”

Elise tried to pull a chair out from the table, but the other kept a firm grip on its back. “Please, you must listen to me, I am begging you,” she pleaded. “When they told me you were from the Associated Press I went back to get the photograph in my purse. I always carry a photo there, not the big ones but a small one, to show what is in Sobibor, the death camp in Poland. It is all true. The pictures were brought out by an American spy plane, a DC-3, flying low to evade—what is the word?”

“Detection,” Ruth supplied, “but nevermind. Sugar, whatever your name is—”

“Elise. Elise Ginsberg.”

“Okay, Elise, I hate to have to break this to you, but the United States does not have DC-3 spy planes flying in and out of Poland. Whoever told you that—”

“But they do,” Elise whispered. “There are many things you don’t know about your own government. Ah, how can I make you believe me? My father and Max have tried to make your government, then the newspapers take notice, but they say they are not interested. How can they not be interested when people are dying? When a whole people is being wiped out?” Tears welled up and slid down her cheeks. “My friend, Max Kubelsky who knows Arnold Foster of the ADL, says that your government does not want to—what is it, um, acknowledge—that the death camps exist, that it is not politically good for them, now in the middle of war. But even as we speak, thousands of people are being murdered!”