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

CHAPTER FOUR

On Thanksgiving, members of the Childrens Aid Society came through the front door bearing holiday bounty: turkeys, cranberries, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing and pecan pies. They invaded Cook’s kitchen and bustled around heating things up and arranging food on platters. A bevy of married women with money, their confidence was impenetrable. They reeked of comfort and the conviction that while they were dishing out the food they had brought, God was praising them. They spoke to me in a cooing voice.

They believed their example was beneficial, so they brought their children. This was the day those children were to learn that it is better to give than to receive. But the children were not strangers. I knew them from school. They were dressed in satin and lace while I sat in my secondhand clothes at a long table with my hands folded in my lap, as instructed.

Elsie Cogswell was among them, looking even more beautiful than she did when the sun shone through her golden hair as she played jacks on the playground. Now she could see with her own eyes where I lived. I knew her house. Everyone did. She lived in the Cogswell estate, and once, when I was exploring Haverhill, I walked by her street and rested for a moment on a stone wall. Just then she cantered bareback across her meadow on a white pony. Did she think these ragamuffins at the table with me mirrored me? Did she imagine me grateful to her?

She was not the only reason I didn’t want to be there. This was the day that Louie was opening his new theater. A banner at the entrance read “Your Orpheum Theater! Grand Opening Thanksgiving Day! Come see The Life of Christ from the Annunciation to the Ascension in Twenty-Seven Beautiful Scenes.” Lady Mother was horrified that I wanted to spend the day inside a motion-picture hall, especially one that had until so recently been a burlesque theater. She put her palm over her heart and said, “No. Absolutely not. Out of the question. Simply out of the question.” She said this as if I’d asked her to lift her skirt in public.

So I sat smoldering at the table in the dining room with its dark Victorian molding, as Elsie, her blue velvet sash matching the blue velvet ribbons on her braids, lowered a bowl of mashed potatoes next to me and said in an unnatural, practiced way, Won’t you have some mashed potatoes? She had been schooled, obviously, on how to behave toward the less fortunate—polite, correct and keeping a kindly distance. The hands that held that heavy stoneware bowl were trembling slightly from fatigue.
Furious, humiliated by finding myself at such a disadvantage, I punched the bowl upward, and white blobs of potato flew out. The bowl crashed and split apart. The sound made everything go dead for a second until Mrs. Cogswell called across the room in a scolding voice, Elsie! The other volunteers filled in the silence with reassuring clucking: “Thats all right. Accidents happen—no harm done.” During the flurry of mops and sponges, for the first time, though we were in the same advanced reading group in school, Elsie met my eyes and did not flick hers away. She knew it wasn’t an accident. She glared at me, waiting for me to be chivalrous, to speak up and take the blame. When I said nothing, she put more energy into her eye beam, which she imagined would wither me. We were locked in combat with our eyes. Yes, I am not grateful. Take your food and shove it. Right, I am just like you. I’m as proud as they come. She lowered her eyelids and blushed.

Lady Mother shot me the hard eye and pointed upstairs, but I did not accept banishment. I pretended to, just to avoid a scene, but when Lady Mother’s back was turned, I grabbed my winter jacket, snuck out the back door and ran into town under a cold, white November sky.

The streets of Haverhill were almost deserted because most people were home celebrating Thanksgiving. Downtown, on the sidewalk, a scratchy-sounding automatic barker blared out, "Step right up, folks. Come inside. Step right up, folks. Come inside.” The old Garlic Box had a fresh coat of white paint but no marquee over the sidewalk. The box-office was a separate little closet with Maggie inside, looking cheerful behind the window. Harry, dear, she said putting her mouth next to the open slot, come around here and look at my ledger book. I was surprised she remembered me because I had not seen her since I woke up in her house that time in the summer.