Read Online The Magician's Girl by Doris Grumbach - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Doris Grumbach
Ads: Link
to her mother. Florence had come to think of herself as a necessary and integral part of the pageant family. It was true that she was well known at the headquarters on Tennessee Avenue and the Boardwalk. More than merely an ardent fan, she was helpful, ready at any moment to sew a strap that broke just before appearance time, to deliver a message outside the walls of the hotel where the contestants were sequestered.
Florence lectured her family about the high morality that attended the pageant. To prevent the kinds of scandals of which the hotel owners had been so fearful, the girls were not allowed to see any man, neither brother nor father, let alone a male acquaintance, during the entire week they were competing in Atlantic City. âNo talking to any man, relative or not, in case the onlookers or the judges might think they were their boyfriends, so they would begin to wonder if the girls were pure.â Florenceâs best moments came when she was asked by a lovesick contestant to place a telephone call out of earshot of her trainer, her chaperon or a hostess. Such a service was not against the rules. Florence carefully wrote down the message and delivered it on a Boardwalk telephone to Harvey, or Billy-Lee or Derwin, who was staying nearby in an inexpensive rooming house. Then she wrote on the back of the note the boyfriendâs response, always full of tenderness, good wishes and avid mention of reunion. She enjoyed the game of reporting what he said to Miss Idaho or Miss New Mexico, at a rare moment when no one else was around.
Florence had no gift for evocative narrative. Of course, her failure mattered not at all to Joseph, who hardly listened. But Maud had to settle for statistics and the special nomenclature she was treated to: âevening gownâ always, never âdressâ; âswimsuitâ for âbathing suit.â âTalentâ for what were performances that showed very little evidence of competence. She wished her mother had been endowed with more understanding, more insight. She wanted to understand why the girls submitted themselves to the terrible rigors of the display, why the helpers devoted their lives to the enterprise. What brought thousands of spectators to Atlantic City to see the week of events? Most of all, Maud needed to know why, compulsively and totally absorbed, Florence Noon went year and year after year to witness every step of the process that led to the crowning of a Miss America.
T HERE ARE NO REMOTE PLACES left on this planet. Visitors, tourists, explorers, crowd into every faraway corner, creating spoilage or ârestoration,â like imitators copying old masters in museums. The old place is âimproved,â so that it becomes common, even comic. The last frontier, the only remote place, is the interior of the self. The final privacy.
Elizabeth Becker, called Liz almost from the day she was born, grew up in Greenwich Village, a cozy, narrow-streeted and alleyed area of New York City, in a small apartment on Christopher Street. She bicycled in Washington Square Park around the greened-over statue of Garibaldi, shooting marbles in the slutch around the trees with Italian kids whose fathers played checkers on the benches nearby. She jumped rope with skillful barefoot Chinese kids from Bleecker Street. When she was older, she wandered the short streets and mews that pushed off from the Square in every direction. To her satisfaction her life was perfectly haphazard, a happy characteristic she was always to attribute to never seeing anything odd about West Fourth Street and West Eleventh Street crossing each other in the Villageâs comfortable illogic. To most New Yorkers, in those days, the Village was a puzzle, remote and almost unknown.
Lizâs parents had once been Village bohemians, had known Maxwell Bodenheim to say hello to on Eighth Street, had hobnobbed with artists whose studios faced compulsively north as though only the light from
Florence lectured her family about the high morality that attended the pageant. To prevent the kinds of scandals of which the hotel owners had been so fearful, the girls were not allowed to see any man, neither brother nor father, let alone a male acquaintance, during the entire week they were competing in Atlantic City. âNo talking to any man, relative or not, in case the onlookers or the judges might think they were their boyfriends, so they would begin to wonder if the girls were pure.â Florenceâs best moments came when she was asked by a lovesick contestant to place a telephone call out of earshot of her trainer, her chaperon or a hostess. Such a service was not against the rules. Florence carefully wrote down the message and delivered it on a Boardwalk telephone to Harvey, or Billy-Lee or Derwin, who was staying nearby in an inexpensive rooming house. Then she wrote on the back of the note the boyfriendâs response, always full of tenderness, good wishes and avid mention of reunion. She enjoyed the game of reporting what he said to Miss Idaho or Miss New Mexico, at a rare moment when no one else was around.
Florence had no gift for evocative narrative. Of course, her failure mattered not at all to Joseph, who hardly listened. But Maud had to settle for statistics and the special nomenclature she was treated to: âevening gownâ always, never âdressâ; âswimsuitâ for âbathing suit.â âTalentâ for what were performances that showed very little evidence of competence. She wished her mother had been endowed with more understanding, more insight. She wanted to understand why the girls submitted themselves to the terrible rigors of the display, why the helpers devoted their lives to the enterprise. What brought thousands of spectators to Atlantic City to see the week of events? Most of all, Maud needed to know why, compulsively and totally absorbed, Florence Noon went year and year after year to witness every step of the process that led to the crowning of a Miss America.
T HERE ARE NO REMOTE PLACES left on this planet. Visitors, tourists, explorers, crowd into every faraway corner, creating spoilage or ârestoration,â like imitators copying old masters in museums. The old place is âimproved,â so that it becomes common, even comic. The last frontier, the only remote place, is the interior of the self. The final privacy.
Elizabeth Becker, called Liz almost from the day she was born, grew up in Greenwich Village, a cozy, narrow-streeted and alleyed area of New York City, in a small apartment on Christopher Street. She bicycled in Washington Square Park around the greened-over statue of Garibaldi, shooting marbles in the slutch around the trees with Italian kids whose fathers played checkers on the benches nearby. She jumped rope with skillful barefoot Chinese kids from Bleecker Street. When she was older, she wandered the short streets and mews that pushed off from the Square in every direction. To her satisfaction her life was perfectly haphazard, a happy characteristic she was always to attribute to never seeing anything odd about West Fourth Street and West Eleventh Street crossing each other in the Villageâs comfortable illogic. To most New Yorkers, in those days, the Village was a puzzle, remote and almost unknown.
Lizâs parents had once been Village bohemians, had known Maxwell Bodenheim to say hello to on Eighth Street, had hobnobbed with artists whose studios faced compulsively north as though only the light from
Similar Books
