The Impersonator (4 page)

I told myself my luck would change in Toledo. But Bert Earl and Girls auditioned only tall dancers and my range wasn’t high enough for Hanson’s Double Quartette. I filled in for an usher at one theater and sold tickets at another to pay my room. A roper hired me to give some sex appeal to his cowboy routine, but he figured on going into burlesque and I figured I’d be wearing nothing but a holster, so we parted ways. I worked one-night stands on the “death trail”—five shows a day—with a Polish ethnic act until they finally gave up and went home to Cleveland. I went with them to audition for a job as a song plugger selling sheet music, but they didn’t think I looked the part.

Late July found me sick from bad chili, sweltering in a fifty-cent Akron hotel with seven clams to my name. The bed was set in four pans of oxalic acid, which kept the ants from getting into the sheets but did nothing to discourage the fleas that were already safely tucked in. The god-awful flocked wallpaper on the ceiling was losing its battle with gravity, curling at the seams. With every step in the room above, a delicate shower of dried flour paste snowed down on my sheets.

I was not finished with vaudeville, but vaudeville was finished with me. Even small-time spots I’d gone for had bombed. At every kiddie audition, I had lost to a kid. Why hire a woman to play a girl when they could hire the real thing and pay her less? I was not Mary Pickford after all. The same talents that had seemed so precocious in a ten-year-old turned out to be stunningly average in an adult. It dawned on me that, but for the kindness of the Darlings, I’d have washed up years ago.

Jack-of-all-trades, I had called myself. There was another side to that coin: master of none.

My self-confidence shattered, I examined the options. If not vaudeville, what? How could I make a living? I knew nothing beyond the stage. I had no idea how the civilian world worked. No one would hire me as an office clerk or a telephone operator or a shopgirl with the taint of vaudeville on my skin. Performers are toasted and admired as long as they are onstage. Offstage, we are not respectable, like gypsies or immigrants.

I had no money, no prospects, and no family to turn to for help. The only world I knew had turned its back on me. I felt so sick and alone I wanted to die.

Come on, Baby, don’t give up.
I heard my mother’s voice in my head as I often did, as clear as if she were standing beside my pillow.
We’ve been here before. Remember Cincinnati and that awful stage manager? Remember that winter in Albany? You’ve been through worse than this. Think about what you’ve got going for you. There’s always another job just around the corner
.

In point of fact, there was a job for the asking directly across the street. An inner voice forced me to the window where I looked through the grimy glass at the brothel that faced my hotel. A man walked out and paused to light a cigarette. Curtains moved in an upstairs window. Another man went in. There had been a brothel a few blocks down from my hotel in Toledo. There had been a brothel on the corner near my rooming house in Cleveland. And now, here was a brothel across the street. Suddenly, I saw what was happening, and my heart raced. They were getting closer. How much longer before they reached me?

Panic squeezed my chest. “No!” I said aloud.

An attack of chills drove me to dig my winter coat out of my trunk. Shivering in the summer heat, I slipped my arms into the sleeves and my hands into the pockets. In the right pocket, my fingers closed around a business card. Oliver Beckett must have placed it there without my knowledge back in March.

An omen? I’d once helped fleece gullible people at séances. Was that so different from helping to con a wealthy family out of their money by playing the role of an heiress? Another town, another name, another role. It was just a job, and for once, a well-paying one. No one gets hurt; no one is left destitute. I glanced down at Oliver’s card and saw in my mind the photograph of the poor little rich girl who looked like me, and I couldn’t help wondering,
What really happened to her?

Firmly I pushed that thought aside. Never mind the heiress. I was in this for the money. Thoughts of the real Jessamyn Carr dimmed, like a fade-out at the end of a sad moving picture.

6

A faint knock at my bedroom door. A creaking noise. The ruddy round cheeks of the housekeeper peeping in once again. Yes, I was awake. Yes, I could see Mr. Oliver Beckett. “As soon as I’m dressed, I’ll come—”

But he was right behind her.

I pushed myself up against the pillows and yawned as Oliver lumbered into the room. I didn’t care. Oliver had no interest in women. Besides, I was swathed from neck to wrist to ankle in a maidenly nightgown supplied by the housekeeper herself after I had arrived at the door of the Beckett mansion four days earlier, feverish, incoherent, and “without suitable nightclothes.” As Oliver had promised, an army of servants and two doctors mobilized to wait on me. And I let them.

He beamed. “I came as soon as I could, my dear. I trust everyone has been taking good care of you?”

“The heir to the throne could not have received better care, thank you very much. I’ve been bathed, brushed, spoon-fed, and pampered like a French poodle.” The sickness that had started with something I ate had taken a detour through fever territory, keeping me in bed for several days, but I felt better today. I stretched my lips into a smile. No matter what I thought of Oliver, I was going to have to work with him.

Oliver snapped his fingers at the housekeeper, who bobbed her head and backed out of the room. He smiled at me. “Let me have a good look at you,” he said in a jovial voice, sweeping open the draperies to the four o’clock sun. “I’ve been quite worried about you.”

A shame if I were to die and ruin his only chance at a fortune.

“I’ll make it. Lucky you have a house in Cleveland. I was so sick, I don’t believe I could have managed a longer trip.”

I had come, as he instructed, on the train from Akron, arriving at Cleveland’s Union Terminal an hour after we had exchanged telegrams. A uniformed chauffeur had met me on the platform, lugged my luggage and me to the car, and drove us west along the Gold Coast of Lake Erie. The trip was a blur.

“But this is not my house! Did you think that? No, it belongs to a dear chum, Randolph Stouffer, who is traveling in Europe. When I realized your dire straits, I thought through my list of pliable friends for one close to Akron. Randy came first to mind. He was delighted to lend me his home for as long as we want it. Keeps the servants out of mischief, he said.”

So
that
was how Oliver lived—mooching off rich friends in the best four-flusher tradition. Nice work if you could get it. He pulled a chair over beside my bed and sat. We pretended not to notice the protesting creak.

“While you have been recuperating, my dear, I have not been idle. I have drawn floor plans and family trees, made lists of what you’ll need to learn, and gathered information and photographs to help you.”

A pretty young maid stopped at the doorway and cleared her throat. “Excuse me, sir, miss. Mrs. Wisniowolski is wanting to know if you’d care for tea?”

Oliver barely noticed her. I told the girl we would love tea. And some of those dainty bread-and-butter sandwiches I was unable to stomach yesterday. “So that’s how you say her name,” I mused when the maid was out of earshot. I repeated the unfamiliar sounds softly.

“Surely you, of all people, are accustomed to foreign-sounding names. I thought vaudeville was full of Polacks, niggers, kikes, and other … well, immigrants.” And he could look down his nose at them because his grandfather had come over on an earlier boat. I had known snooty people like him before.

“Yep, and they always seem to be the most talented performers too. But on their way through the stage door, they usually trade their originals for something catchy the public will remember. Years ago, when I was in the Kid Kabaret with Eddie Cantor, he told me his real name was Israel Iskowitz. Who’s going to remember that, let alone spell it? I could give you dozens of examples like that.”

No need. Oliver was all business at hand.

“What made you change your mind?”

It was a question I had wrestled with during the past few days as I lay in bed. Why had I changed my mind? The easy answer, of course, was that I had been sick, scared, and desperate enough to snatch at any way out. In my fevered state, Oliver Beckett’s card in my coat pocket represented the solution to all my troubles. Penniless and alone, I had few options. And yet … it wasn’t that simple.

My mother would have disapproved.
Well, you’re not sick anymore,
I could hear her say. I’m still very weak, I protested.
So wait a few days and then tell him you can’t go through with it.
But I can’t find work.
You can sell tickets at a box office in Cleveland until a suitable act passes through.
I’m not good enough. Anything I got would be Small Time or “death trail.”
Nonsense, you’ve more talent than that.
I’m just trying the part on for size. I can always back out.
It’s dishonest.
No more than most. We’re not cutting the family off, you know, just spreading the wealth a bit further. It’s really no different than what those spiritualists do, taking money from people who can afford it and making them happy by contacting their lost loved one. No harm done.
It’s dangerous.
No one will get hurt.

Mother came to me every night in my dreams, but I wouldn’t listen to her. Vaudeville had beaten me down and humiliated me beyond recovery. I couldn’t go back for another punch in the face. I wasn’t as talented as Mother thought. As I myself had once thought. And I
had
found work, I argued. I had taken a role in Oliver Beckett’s production of
She Stoops to Con,
and if I played the part well, I had a shot at real money, a comfortable life, and something else. Something money couldn’t buy. Suppose they were happy to see me? Suppose I really could take Jessie’s place in Jessie’s family?

And then there was that feeling I could not quite put into words, even to Mother. The sense that this was what Jessie wanted. From the moment I saw her photograph, I had liked her, and I suspected she liked me. We had something in common, Jessie and I, something more than just our looks, as remarkable as that resemblance was. Something beyond our shared status as orphans. But what? I was no threat to her, and she knew it. If she were still alive and returned home, I’d exit stage left faster than you could say “Jack Robinson.” If she were dead … but she felt too alive to be dead.

To be sure, masquerading as an heiress would be tricky. I’d been impersonating people all my life, but this was a tougher gig than any I’d ever had, being on stage every waking minute. The challenge roused me from the melancholy that had held me down for weeks. I could do this. I could do it well.

I looked at Oliver. I had anticipated his question. Still, I cocked my head to one side and paused so my reply would not sound rehearsed.

“Jock and Francine decided to shrink the act to genuine Darlings. I had a lot of offers—good ones—but, to be honest, nothing appealed. In twenty-five years of vaudeville, I’ve played every part the circuit has to offer. I want to see what it’s like to live somewhere for longer than a week. I want to wear clothes that aren’t costumes and makeup that isn’t greasepaint. I want to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Eiffel Tower before I die. I want some money.”

“You realize you are going to have to work hard?”

“I’ve always worked hard, Mr. Beckett,” I said in a tone that would freeze water.

“And it involves a good deal of risk. More for me than you.”

He was right about that. In a pinch, I could disappear into anonymity with little lost, since I came into this escapade with nothing but my face and my acting talents. Somehow I couldn’t picture portly Oliver hopping a boxcar with a cardboard suitcase and making for Mexico. It was an advantage I had over him, something I could use if he became too domineering and started treating me as rudely as he treated Randy Stouffer’s servants.

“Will you be ready to begin tomorrow morning?”

Some of my old self-confidence had returned with my health. Like a soldier coming home from the war, I’d been wounded in battle and shaken to the core, but I had survived with a more realistic notion of my worth. I had accepted a job, and I would handle it like the professional I was. Still, the notion of me waltzing into high society without anyone noticing I didn’t belong there rattled me more than I wanted to admit.

“I’m ready this evening, if you like.”

Oliver stood. “Get dressed, then, and meet me in the study. I’ll tell the girl to bring the tray down there.”

I had to poke about a while before I found the right room, one that was lined ceiling to floor with fine leather books. My host, magnifying glasses on his nose and thin hair combed across his bald spot, was busy at a large library table, shuffling papers like a croupier. The maid was busy at the tea table, dealing cups and plates of tiny sandwiches. I sank into a soft leather sofa and poured.

“We’ll start with you, Jessie,” he said as soon as the maid had departed, and from that moment forward, I became Jessie. Jessamyn Beckett Carr, born on September 30, 1903, in London to American parents who spent more time out of their country than in it. He had a dozen pictures of myself to show me.

“Look, here you are at four, with your nanny and your mother, Blanche,” he said, placing on the table several silver- and gilt-framed photographs he’d acquired for the occasion. “Dear Blanche.” He sighed. “I was very fond of my little sister. And here you are at ten, with both parents in Paris.”

Oliver’s photographs brought that same tingle of electricity I had experienced the first time I saw his small image of Jessie at our dinner in Omaha. Like that one, these portrayed a serious girl, a girl who did not smile often, a girl whose eyes looked through the camera with an intensity far greater than her years, almost as if she were trying to reach into the future to people who would view her photograph and make them understand. Unconsciously, I touched the glass. I wanted to understand.