Hank chose a quiet corner of the empty auditorium for them to sit and watch the rehearsal. Phoebe held her breath, expecting to be transported by the magic of watching actors bring her own words to life, trying them out in different intonations before finding the delivery that would be filmed before the audience on Friday as it was aired on television sets throughout the country. Instead, she was disappointed to find the director more focused on blocking and lighting. No one tried to make any of it come alive. She kept a pleased look on her face for Hank’s sake, wondering how long she could wait till she could make an excuse to go home. Then Geraldine spoke her line: “Well of course the letter’s in code, the woman is saying you’re handsome.” And everyone, even the actor playing the maligned detective, chuckled.
“She’s good, isn’t she?” Phoebe whispered.
“You give her good stuff and she knows what to do with it,” Hank said.
Off Phoebe went into a fantasy of a show written by her and starring Geraldine. It became a bigger and bigger hit, so that when she vaguely heard someone ask if Phoebe Adler was there, it was no surprise. Until Hank said, “What the hell does Kelvin want you for?”
Kelvin was the producer, and Phoebe had never laid eyes on him. Now, apparently, he knew where she was and had sent Miss Ebbs to bring her to his office. Phoebe’s heart swelled. Producers only met with the best writers, meetings that usually resulted in the offer of more work. No wonder Hank was miffed. Phoebe might slip through his fingers after all.
“I’d better come with you,” he said, taking her elbow.
“It’s all right, I won’t trip,” she said, attempting to free herself. His hand tightened, and she followed his stunned gaze to see what must be Mr. Kelvin, standing by the stage manager’s table at the back of the auditorium. A short, barrel-chested man clasping and unclasping his fingers, he wagged a playful finger at Hank.
“Hank, you know you’re supposed to be upstairs.”
“Sure, Mr. K, I know. You gonna take me to the woodshed?” Hank asked.
Mr. Kelvin threw back his head and laughed, reminding Phoebe of a Macy’s Santa.
“You writers with the mouths on you, it’s too much.” He grinned at Hank, who grinned back but still clutched Phoebe proprietarily. “Now then.” Mr. Kelvin turned his bright eyes to Phoebe. “You’re Phoebe Adler?” he asked encouragingly.
“I am,” she said, presenting her hand to shake. “Pleased to meet you, sir.”
“You’re fired, dear.”
CHAPTER TWO
* * *
London, Spring 1955
“Avast, ye hardy!” Rhoda cried, leaping onto the armchair and waving her cardboard sword over her head. “The battle will begin at midnight, in the middle of dawn! We will kill all the prisoners, and then we’ll tie them up and make them dance for us!”
Hannah hid her laugh in a cigarette. She couldn’t imagine anything more delightful than the stream of consciousness that flowed from the imagination of a five-year-old. Especially her own child. Hannah swooped Rhoda up and directed her toward a low wooden stool.
“I know you’re the pirate king, darling, but please don’t ruin the armchair, we’ve just had it restuffed.”
“Bah, humbug!” Rhoda answered. “’Tis a pirate ship, matey!”
“Sail out for open sea,” Hannah suggested. “I hear there’s treasure to be found on a distant isle.”
Rhoda promptly sat on the stool and began to chart the course. Though she gave occasional instructions to her crew, she was mostly silent, her eyes tight on the blue-green wallpaper, her hands steering an imaginary wheel. Hannah followed Rhoda’s gaze, wishing she could climb inside her daughter’s imagination as the wallpaper turned into a sea. She hoped it would be a long, long time before Rhoda stopped believing in the wild worlds she could conjure, just by insisting they were real.
Hannah sighed and turned back to the script she was reading. Not much of a world conjured here. Another detective thriller. It made perfect sense for writers to submit variations on what was popular, but television was opening up huge vistas for drama, provided it passed muster with the censors, and she wanted her scrappy little production company to make its mark.
Her company. Incredible. She had a pile of scripts, each one addressed to Hannah Wolfson, Executive Producer, Sapphire Films. She didn’t like the reason she and Paul had left New York for London, but it had changed her world. It all still made her giggle like a schoolgirl.
“What’s funny, Mama?” Rhoda demanded, steering quickly to shore so that she might share the joke.
“Oh, nothing really, darling. Only I love my work.”
“You make stories!” Rhoda cried triumphantly.
“Not the way you do,” Hannah conceded. “But I read stories, and when one is good, I give the writer money and then hire people to act it and others to film it. And I make an arrangement with a network, who puts it on television, and then people watch it.”
“Exactly, you make stories,” Rhoda insisted. “And you tell everyone what to do, just like at home!”
“I beg your pardon?” Paul asked, joining them.
Hannah smiled at her handsome husband, still so boyish despite gray-speckled hair and deepening lines around his eyes. They’d met at a press conference the day the Allies crossed the Rhine, and spent the next four hours discussing how Roosevelt could expand upon New Deal policies once the war was over. She knew she would marry him three weeks later, the day Roosevelt died. Paul came over, bearing four dozen long-stemmed roses, then put his head in her lap and sobbed for their beloved dead president until she worried he might give himself an aneurysm. They’d wiped each other’s eyes, drank a bottle of Gordon’s gin, and got engaged on VE Day.
“Just explaining my work, darling,” Hannah told Paul.
“Ah!” Paul laughed. Hannah knew he viewed her venture into television as a step down. They’d been journalists on rival newspapers when they met, and he saw no profession as more noble. “Mama’s just having a sojourn,” he said to Rhoda. “And lucky for her I can pay for it.”
Hannah gave him a playful swat. Paul’s grandfather had been a banker—a distant relation of the Rothschilds, though he’d changed the family name to Rutherford—who liked to give money to inventors and anyone who put their inventions to good use, assuming these would lead to shares in stock. He’d invested in the development of dental floss, zippers, and hearing aids, and managed things so well, the family came to possess the sort of wealth that Hannah, born and raised in a Lower East Side tenement, could still barely comprehend. The Rutherford fortune moved her to the foreign territory of Central Park West, where Paul invited her to choose their home from several apartments his family owned.