“Can we keep going?” Eleanor asked.
“We’re supposed to take Sixth Ave uptown,” Tommy said.
“I know, but we’re so close. I want to see them.” He gave Eleanor a curious look, and she was impatient with his confusion. “The theaters.”
“She okay?” Tommy asked Rosie.
“You might have seen other girls audition for Broadway shows,” Rosie said, “but you haven’t met Eleanor. She lives for the theater.”
Tommy acquiesced, and they continued walking and were soon coming up on Broadway. Eleanor felt the moisture leave her mouth. All down her arms, her skin prickled, and her hands went cold.
“Look to your right, Eleanor,” Tommy said with a smile in his voice. “Times Square.”
In the movies, the ingénue always lifted her arms as if she could take in the whole world. Eleanor herself had planned to spin and yelp when she reached Times Square. She’d directed her first entrance to New York dozens of times in her mind.
But all she could do was stare. Her eyes filled with tears. She raised her hands to her mouth.
It was the most colorful place in the world. There were painted signs covering every surface. A giant Canadian Club Whiskey billboard stared her in the face, but it was blocks away. Neon letters mounted on scaffolding advertised beer, cigarettes, Kleenex, televisions, clubs with names that made Eleanor blush. Enormous statues of Pepsi bottles sat on the roof of a clothing store. It was as if she’d walked onto the pages of a catalog. Then she looked at each of the storefronts and saw the marquees. Even just seeing the theaters, sleepy during the daytime, made Eleanor feel like she’d met her heroes.
“The New Amsterdam,” Eleanor said. “That used to be where Ziegfeld had his Follies. It’s a cinema now.”
“I thought you said you haven’t been here before.”
Eleanor had quite forgotten Tommy was there.
“I’ve read about it.” Eleanor’s feet wanted to move, and her skin itched. There was a tugging feeling in her stomach. She walked ahead and waved at her companions to hurry up and cross the street.
“This one still operates,” she said, hustling them down Forty-First Street. “The National.”
“I didn’t think anyone knew the names of these places,” Tommy said.
“Eleanor knows all the names,” Rosie said, “and their intersections. She memorized the map when we were fourteen.”
“I remember when I first learned that they weren’t all on Broadway.” Eleanor shook her head. “I couldn’t believe it!”
“I never thought about that,” Tommy said.
Rosie raised an eyebrow. “If you spend more time with Eleanor, you’ll hear buckets of things about theater you didn’t care about before.”
Tommy smirked. “Or since.”
Then Eleanor stopped in her tracks, suddenly quiet. “There it is,” she said. “A real theater.”
The Broadhurst was an unassuming building to anyone else, but to her, it was holy. It was large and square, with a balcony lining the front top floor and a marquee hanging over four sets of double doors. Every night, a thousand people filed through those doors. What would it be like to go backstage? It must have thrummed with activity. The crew, the orchestra, the director, the wardrobe personnel, the actors. An entire building filled with people living their dream. Dozens of people who loved the theater as much as Eleanor did.
Rosie reached for her hand and squeezed.
They stood there for a long while before Rosie convinced Eleanor it was time to move. They turned west. Eleanor looked behind her, watching the bright colors slip behind the cold steel of the skyscrapers, until it was gone.
Tommy walked them the rest of the way, growing more animated as they went. He liked being a tour guide. He told stories about fun nights with his buddies and pointed out places to get a cheap dinner or where they might find a kind shopkeeper if they ran into trouble at night. Eleanor felt a flurry at his words, at the idea that they would stay a lot longer than three days. Eleanor listened as if she were hearing a preview of her life. The thought of her parents gave her more than a pang, but she refused to bow to the guilt. When Tommy dropped them off in front of their hotel, he wished them both luck and kissed Eleanor on the cheek.
“Next time I see you,” he said, “you’ll be a Broadway actress.”
Eleanor watched him go. She’d convinced at least one person.
Chapter Three
Eleanor knew she had reached the Plymouth Theatre when she saw a line of girls wrapped around the block. Most of them stood in twos or threes chatting animatedly, even though it was seven o’clock in the morning. She stopped on the opposite street corner to take it all in. Many of these girls had what she imagined were Broadway legs—long and slim, made to wear those beaded leotards she’d seen in pictures of revues. In Eleanor’s experience, there were pretty girls and plain girls, fat ones and thin ones, but that was the limit of the qualitative assessments. But in the face of her competition, she became aware of a hundred new ways to feel inadequate. Eleanor was neither fat nor thin; her body was strong and substantial. Her complexion was smooth but freckled. Her copper hair was all that distinguished her in this crowd of beautiful girls. She’d never been the loveliest girl, nor the plainest. But once in line, she felt the thickness of her thighs, the stubbiness of her hands, the roundness of her cheeks. As though her origins could be read on her face, Eleanor was sure she looked like one of the pigs on her farm. But none of these insecurities would hurt as much as whatever way she fell short against the girl who would win the part.
Eleanor wished she didn’t want the role so desperately. It pushed her into fear and disquiet, out of the town where she had the best voice and into an audition with hundreds of others in New York.
Eleanor thought of returning to Wisconsin—facing her father’s disappointment, listening to her mother recount every time she’d risen early to sell pies at the market to afford the bonds that Eleanor had taken in one selfish blow. She thought of John Plutz, who had been so tickled when she said she was auditioning for a Broadway show that she may have led him to believe she’d been personally invited. What would Pat think of her, giving up after she’d made it all this way? It wasn’t for me, he’d said.
Eleanor needed this place to be for her. If she returned home, she would never live down the shame or regret. And then what was left? Managing Pat’s store, growing old with only the records as company? Dodging comments from the people in town who had always made fun of her ambitions and who now had even more of an excuse? Eleanor could not allow that to happen.
The early morning air gave a touch of freshness to the otherwise smoggy Times Square. It was cool without humidity—back-to-school air. Eleanor let it work on her, then stepped across the street.