In Theda Bara's Tent (as Reviewed by Publisher's Weekly)

CHAPTER TWELVE

Anita Stewart came to Boston to make a personal appearance at Nathan Gordons Olympia Theater, where one of her pictures was playing. The Gordons gave a gala party for her at their mansion in Jamaica Plain, and I went there dressed in my first tuxedo, a present from Louie who was always saying to me, “If you look like a million, you’ll feel like a million.” I spent quite some time admiring myself in the mirror, a decidedly prosperous, good-looking young man, tall, lean, muscular—a commanding fellow with curly dark hair and no beard yet, just fuzz no matter how many times I rubbed my pink cheeks.

Butlers at the entrance doors accepted top hats, scarves and fur capes worn more for show than necessity because it was a warm spring night. The sound of a Viennese waltz filled the grand foyer.

In the ballroom, men and women in formal attire were lifting Champagne flutes from silver trays carried by waiters in white jackets. Chandeliers sparkled light on everyone. Banquet tables were heaped with food. Anita stood in one corner as if backed there by the crowd that surrounded her. She was greeting everyone with a smile and an extended hand sheathed in a white glove up to her elbow. The dark circles under her eyes were the color of bruises. Nearby, her mother hovered, alert as a she-wolf.

 Men in cutaway tails and gray muttonchops smoked cigars and talked business. Matrons in gowns sat on love seats around the edge of the floor appraising those who passed by and holding fans before their lips so no one except their immediate neighbor could hear what they said. Waiters passed around trays of miniature food cut in interesting shapes.

 In front of a mirror in a gilt frame was a group of girls in ball gowns, some with flowers twined in their hair, others with jewels sparkling around their waist and neck. How lovely they were! They had erected a barrier of giggles about themselves broken now and then by quick eye darts around the room to see who might be admiring them. Secretly, they peeked in the gilt mirror for reassurance.

I had always wanted and not wanted to be included on the guest list of this sort of party. I wanted to be among the swells, but I worried that I wouldn’t know how to behave. My classmates in Haverhill who had attended the formal shindigs in the ballrooms of one another’s houses were trained year after year in the etiquette of such things—how to stand before adults without shrinking when introduced, how to ask a lady to dance, how to perform the dances, what to speak about while dancing and how to return the lady to her seat when the music stopped. In movies, I’d seen dashing cavaliers with perfect manners twirl about with perfect girls in wedding-cake dresses. It never occurred to me that in real life, the girls had to wait to be asked. The movies never showed the wallflowers or, if there was one, she was shown as so unattractive, she deserved to be sitting by her self. The audience was encouraged to ridicule her. But now I saw that even pretty girls had to face the humiliation of waiting to be asked. If I invited them to dance (even me!), they would be grateful. There they were in their dresses, purebred kittens, brave little creatures trying to put the best face on their predicament, which was that their future depended upon finding a man willing to take care of them. Maybe he would be at this party. They were as trapped as I was, as everyone was, in their stage of life.     They would soon be old enough to hire the girls I grew up with at the Elizabeth Home, girls who, at the age of six, began to scrub floors, lug water buckets, shine brass, mend clothes, darn socks and wash dishes, so that when they were fourteen, they would be competent domestics. I stood in that glittering ballroom and hoped that Katie OReilly whose job was washing the breakfast dishes, and Maria dePasquale, who had to take care of the crying babies, might, by some miracle, be doing as I was, picking up a crystal flute and tasting for the first time a carbonated drink that wasn’t exactly delicious but produced an expansive feeling.

One of the girls by the mirror was willowy in a soft yellow dress cut so the tops of her breasts were exposed. Her hair was pulled up and held in place by jewels. She seemed composed, listening to her friends with her head inclined in a charming way. I would have to cut her out of the flock and herd her over to the banquet tables. It could be done. Our eyes met. She was adorable! Was that a blush? Did she blush?