PROLOGUE
Off to Saint Lou
In 1894, at the bright-eyed age of 18, Jim Eberton absolutely couldn't wait to board the train from Baltimore to St. Louis, Missouri. He was heading off for his first year at Gateway College to study law, a profession that held no interest for him whatsoever.
But as far as young Jim was concerned, making his getaway to Gateway in Ol' Saint Lou, on a big bend in the wide M-i-ss-i-ss-i-pp-i, to get a degree in legal skullduggery provided the perfect opportunity and the ideal place to roll the dice on the rest of his life.
It was all due to something that happened completely unexpectedly one Thursday morning, two months prior, when Jim was given a chance to put 800, repeat 800, long miles between himself and his overbearing grandmother and manipulative financial guardian, Prudence T. Eberton.
It just so happened to be the very same Thursday when Pops, the recruiter for the Gateway College football team, the Steamers, was in Baltimore, not to assess promising college football prospects, but to attend his father's funeral.
Pops' real name was Herbert Popovic, also called by some 'Herb the Serb.' He was given that nickname as a boy because his father, Pavlov Popović, was a Serbian sailor who, in 1855, jumped ship upon reaching the port of Baltimore. There he met and married a bossy German barmaid named Margarete, who promptly put him to work fathering ten children, two of whom were boys, Herbert being the eldest.
Pops' bereaved mother, Margarete, had commanded all ten of her children to be at her side for the burial, regardless of how far away they lived. And Margarete, a woman who handled herself admirably, breaking up bar fights, was not a woman to be trifled with.
Young Jim found out about the recruiter's unforeseen visit to Baltimore from the Eberton House Liveryman, Gunther Popovic, who just so happened to be Pops' younger brother.
Jim, hoping to make the Gateway Steamers college team in St. Louis, volunteered to muck out the stalls of the Eberton House stables. So that maybe, just maybe, he could talk Gunther into recommending him to his older brother. Perhaps, even arrange an impromptu tryout while Pops was still in town.
Initially, Gunther felt that Jim's unusual willingness to shovel horseshit illustrated just how bored the young heir to the Eberton family fortune had become living in quasi-captivity under the thumb of his grandmother, Prudence.
But then Gunther had the skeptical thought, 'Or maybe not,' which led him to accept Jim's offer to help clean the stalls the very next morning, at sunrise, after the horses were let out to graze. Gunther had an ulterior motive as well.
He had been desperately trying to get leave from work that Thursday to attend his father's interment alongside his mother, Margarete, and his nine siblings. It would break his mother's heart if he didn't attend.
Unfortunately for Gunther, his father's funeral service was set for the same day as The Prudence T. Eberton Birthday Gala, held annually at 7 p.m. sharp in the grand Eberton House Ballroom. Therefore, Prudence denied Gunther's request and would hear nothing more of it.
So, Gunther, offhandedly, shared that tidbit of personal information with Jim while they were working side-by-side mucking out the stalls.
Well, hallelujah and what the hell!
Immediately, the liveryman and the heir apparent set their smelly shovels aside to put their sweaty heads together, concocting a rather complicated arm-twisting scheme to scratch each other's backs. No—their own back? Which way, whatever worked.
At this point, one might expect to learn what happened next as far as Jim and Gunther were concerned. However, a continuation down that rather lengthy and convoluted rabbit hole is best reserved for later in the story.
So, instead, one is invited to travel a few years backward in time to ask the question, "What does Prudence Eberton's middle initial T stand for?"
"None of your damn business," would be the response given in unison by Jimmy and his lifelong best friend, Ellen Abramowitz, whom everyone, including her parents, called Nelly. She was the very same person who later, at the age of 22, gained notoriety as none other than the amazing, titillating, heart-stopping, Baltimore Burlesque Sensation...Nelly Jones!
That happened soon after Jim went away to college.
Yes, Jim's boyhood and forever-after best friend was Nelly Abramowitz, the precocious daughter of the live-in property manager of the Eberton House Estate on Mount Vernon Square, in Baltimore, where Jim grew up under the authoritarian control of his grandmother, Prudence.
Those two, sneaky, joined-at-the-hip kids liked to pretend they were a popular comic duo at one of the local Vaudeville shows. They gave themselves monikers like Naughty Nell & James the Rake, or Filthy Rich Jimmy at Your Disposal Ma'am & Racetrack Nelly, Raring for the Next Heat.
Throughout adolescence, Nelly created scads upon scads of stupid joke-alogues for them to perform, followed by convulsive side-splitting laughter, always funny to them, but not necessarily to those nearby happening to overhear—much like the following:
....
Evie and L'Jay at home
Evie: struggling through the front door with bags stuffed with corny tchotchkes, leftover gnadl, and embarrassing hand-me-downs
"L'Jay, my parents have invited us to dinner so they can finally meet you. But I haven't told them yet that you're not Jewish. How hard would it be to go with me to meet my parents and make me very, very happy?"
L'Jay: lowering his newspaper to look back at her
"It would be harder than getting a cat to go swimming with you."
Evie and L'Jay: falling on the ground, laughing hysterically together
....
Those two youngsters liked their humor so fast-paced it could ambulate almost an entire lap around the audience backwards, before the slowest-swaybacked-kneeslapping-guffawer could get out of the gate, only to collide head-on with the punch line coming at them from the other direction.
Then, after the mandatory crack up, Schoolmarm Evie would call on Class Clown L'Jay, 'It ain't called misdirection for nothin' ain't it?'
And, L'Jay, forever playing the dunce, would answer, "Yes, Miss Evie, it sure ain't."
At this point, one might wonder, 'How did Evie and L'Jay happen?' And, the answer to that would be:
When Nelly was fifteen, before there even was, were, whatever, an Evie and L'Jay, she schemed up a way to take her rudimentary skits with Jimmy up a notch—because when the imaginary curtains opened and the make-believe theater lights came up and she had to introduce them to the pretend audience as just-plain-themselves, it had become old-hat for her.
So, to get a fresh start, Nelly decided that, "Jimmy & Nelly—Nelly & Jimmy—Nim Jelly—Jelly & her sidekick Nim...rod...Nimrod—No—Min—Minnie—Minnie Yllej—not a chance—OK, think about it...any ideas?—How about Elly...J—L'Jay—Yes!—L'Jay the Swooner—no—L'Jay Crooner & Minnie....apple is...apple of my eye...forbidden fruit...Eve!...Eve—how about—L'Jay Adams and Eve...Eve's mini apple is—L' Jay Adams and Evie from Minneapolis—Eureka! We're Evie & L'Jay Adams from Minneapolis, ready to duo'lll... we—I mean Evie and L'Jay...what do they, we do...?" Nelly had lost her train of thought. "Oh, well."
That was a good example of how Nelly's mind worked. Notice that she must have become distracted by something else of interest before finishing the thought process about their pretend comedy act with made-up monikers in a non-existent Vaudeville show. So, she left Jimmy standing there, wondering, 'What in the hell is she talking about?'
Anyway, Evie & L'Jay, from Minneapolis, or just plain Jimmy and Nelly from Eberton House, if one prefers, were consumed with making fun of lots of things:
Say, people, for instance. Such as full-figured Miss Cynthia Purdy's droopy jowls, who just so happened to be Prudence's on-again-off-again dressmaker. 'Off,' every time the latest high-falutin-froufrou-osity of an evening gown that Prudence had whimsied up for herself was received with dismal reviews from her socialite peer group. Prudence always pinned the blame on poor Cynthia. 'On,' again, as soon as Prudence needed another dress made for a pressing social engagement, and no one but Miss Purdy would oblige her.
Why would Miss Purdy, a woman always impeccably dressed in the latest fashion, agree to be the creator of yet another one of Prudence's unfortunate faux pas? It was for the money, 'Hon,' the Hamden dressmaker's fee rising to meet the urgency of the occasion. How else could Cynthia, herself, remain so well turned out?
Or, say animals, for instance. Like how cats get completely confused while waiting for their owners to return home after a brisk evening walk, and spot them coming back from an entirely different direction from whence they left.
And, farts of course. A big subject with the two insubordinates, especially the silent, deadly ones, for which Prudence was all too well-known, citywide.
Then, there was the constant ribbing of each other, which precluded Jimmy and Nelly from becoming boyfriend and girlfriend. It would have been just plain weird.
They did kiss once when Jim was 13, but seemed older, and Nelly was an immature sixteen, but only that one time, because things got bumpy in their friendship after that. Nelly's sweet dreams of living happily ever after, versus Jim thinking, 'Yecch, that was like kissing my sister,' put them out of balance. So, without discussing it beforehand, they started right back being best friends again, and never talked about it afterward.
Who needs all that romantic foofaraw if it makes a stranger out of the very person you loved in the first place, right?
And as Nelly once asked of no one in particular, "What kind of love is the best kind, anyway? Tell me that, why don't you?"
While growing up at the Eberton House Estate, the two otherwise lonely children, who lived on opposite sides of the entrance drive, were almost brother and sister, except like secret siblings, whom anyone associated with The Evil Crone, Prudence, must never know about their closeness in any way.
That was because, according to Nelly, speaking in her typically theatrical fashion, "The Evil Crone," as she had nicknamed Prudence, "has decreed that her only living descendant, James," even though he was then called Jimmy, "may not consort with a 'common working-class girl,' like me," which was the dismissive manner with which Prudence always referred to Nelly.
The Evil Crone never even bothered to learn the name of her own longtime, trusted, property manager's daughter.
Wasn't it just plain ironic that while Prudence felt superior to and demeaned those under her charge, at the same time, she resented them because of their knowledge and skills, which were so valuable to her?
The high-and-mighty Prudence T. Eberton was not above using coercion and blackmail to keep a valued subordinate securely within her clutches, as she had done with Jimmy's tall, elegant, ebony-skinned nanny, Ida, who subsequently became his academic and physical education instructor.
Prudence, begrudging Ida's ultra-black beauty, grace, and intelligence, had found a way to hold her in 'bondage.' After all, that's what her grandfather and father had done to Ida's forebearers, "in the proud and prosperous days of slavery" as they were wont to proclaim.
The key to Prudence's hold over Ida was funding the exorbitant medical care necessary to keep alive Ida's partially paralyzed father, left gaunt and frail after contracting polio.
If Ida didn't come to heel, Prudence would let her father die. It was as straightforward as that.
* *
The following passage was inspired by the session notes of the vocalization expert Lizbeth L. Schuler after teaching Reading Aloud with Perfect Elocution, Lesson No.1, to one particular burlesque actress named Nelly Jones—a lesson which incidentally devolved, part-way-through, into a discussion about the meaning of life and a circuitous attempt to answer the overwhelming question, "Just how big is the universe anyway?"
After that initial session with Miss Jones, while documenting the conversation in her required notes, Lizbeth described the discussion as being 'enlightening, in a very confusing sort of way. If you know what I mean?'
The 'If you know what I mean' conclusion which Lizbeth had impulsively and uncharacteristically added to her notes was something that a professional like her, fussy to the nth degree, about appropriateness, the proper use of the English language, and the responsibilities associated with being a professionally regulated practitioner of Sign Language and Vocalization Techniques at the Maryland School for the Deaf located in the old Hessian Barracks in Frederick Maryland, would normally never, in a million years, have written about any of her clients, deaf or not—before meeting Nelly, that is.
One might want to take a little breather after that humdinger, so:
Quiet humming in the background ... hhmmhahhmm-ha-hhmm-hhmm-hhmm...hhmm...hhmmhahhmm ha hhmm....still waiting.....hhmmhahhmm ha hhmm...
If you know what I mean—ALRIGHT ALREADY!
Lizbeth considered inking out that last sentence, but didn't know how to do it without rousing the attention of the all-male Professional Woman's Review Board, who looked for any excuse, no matter how small, to revoke the hard-earned license of a practicing female member.
To start with, they would immediately, forthrightly, with great consternation, disavow themselves of Miss Schuler's disturbing choice of clients.
Lizbeth could hear them whispering in her mind, "How could one even conceive of a professional like Miss Schuler, providing treatment 'pro bono' to that scantily-clad, low-life showgirl for an affliction that is clearly merely an affectation intended to relieve decent men of their hard-earned money, not to mention their reputations? And to what purpose... scientific research? Looking for some radical new codfish oil remedy? For what...immorality? Bunk to that. We must look into the matter forthwith," the bored...sorry, board members decided without any decence...sorry, dissent."
Actually, it wouldn't have surprised Lizbeth at all to learn that some of the supposed gentlemen had already 'looked into the matter,' as it were, while spending an evening or two at the Gayety Theater in distant Baltimore, unbeknownst to their wives.
Lizbeth could have simply stated in her notes that her client, who preferred anonymity, was such a complex personality that it was challenging to categorize her condition into a single, straightforward classification.
But Lizbeth didn't do that, and afterward she became anxious about it, but not enough to cancel her next scheduled appointment with the 'Sensational Miss Jones.'
If one must know, Lizbeth was intrigued by what she might learn from the experience, not so much about Nelly, but about her own prim and proper self.
* *
"Subjugation of others results first in subterfuge, then in revolt," was what Ida, Jim's childhood nanny and current preparatory school professor, stated about social unrest.
Although Jim understood the general concept of the 'practice' college-level lecture Ida was presenting to him, he didn't fully grasp the importance of the statement, in correlation to his own life. That was, even though Ida practically threw it at him like a piece of chalk.
Jim had been caught by Ida daydreaming, imagining that he was surreptitiously sorting the imaginary black jellybeans out from the other colors in a pretend paper bag, to later give to Nelly. And, he was doing this while sitting high up in the back row of a fantasy lecture hall with a pretend audience of classmates. Some were dozing off, other's passing notes among themselves, and one saucy co-ed was showing him a bit of ankle.
Yes, there was a young woman in Jim's made-up law class because, at that time, some accomplished females were studying to become lawyers. If one wanted to change the legislation prohibiting women from voting, then one had to take the matter to court. It was 1894, after all, and the promising new era of female lawyers riding their bicycles to federal courthouses nationwide was off to a heady start.
Notice the bicycle reference in the previous comments about Jim's daydream. It was not only a symbol of women's freedom, but was also the enjoyable self-propelled two-wheel vehicle that Jim, himself, loved riding 'to no end,' in the 'great extent; very much' definition of the phrase.
Obviously, Nelly had rubbed off on Jim, and not in a good way. He felt exhausted by constantly having to play L'Jay in her persistent parodies in which his participation was not optional. 'Maybe, it's high time to kill off Evie and L'Jay, from Minneapolis, for good,' Jim thought. But he absolutely dreaded bringing up the subject with Nelly, and fretted, 'She will never ever forgive me for it.'
Because Jim knew Nelly better than anyone else on earth, he completely understood why she was the way she was. Humor was literally what kept her alive. It was the life jacket that kept Nelly afloat in the mighty sea storms of life, in which mountainous breaking waves of sick cruelty, prejudice, and selfishness threatened to drag her down, down, down—down, down, into placid depths, down to a gentle place of peaceful acceptance, forever.
So, Jim had always to be at the ready to rescue her at a moment's notice. That way, just in case Nelly went off the deep end again, Jim could toss out a throwaway line to her, of which she couldn't resist grabbing hold. Then she would pull herself back on deck with a laugh and a smile.
"If it weren't for humor, Nelly would be dead." Jim acknowledged, "It's a damn good thing it comes to her naturally."
But then, Jim had the worrisome thought that the humor between him and Nelly didn't seem to be flowing smoothly anymore. For him, it had become too much work, and the Evie and L'Jay skits were suffering as a result, not to mention their friendship.
For example:
Just the day before, while Prudence was away, Nelly interrupted Jim from studying for the entrance examination to be accepted at Gateway College in St. Louis. She wanted him to help her with a skit she was working on.
Standing in Jim's bedroom doorway, Nelly said, "Let me try this one out on you, but I really don't think it's funny."
Jim looked up bleary-eyed from the books and papers strewn across his bed and said. "Okay." At the same time, he was thinking, 'I can't say no to Nelly. Isn't that really the problem anyway?'
Nelly cleared her throat, stood up tall, and took a deep breath to explain, "Okay, Jim, this is how the skit got started. Get this, because it's one for the memory books. Ready? Okay. Here it is, 'Elephants Never Forget.' Whaddya think?"
Jim just yawned and sighed, "I have no idea what you are talking about."
"Evie and L'Jay, silly. I started out by asking myself, 'Do elephants actually have good memories?' Then, I asked Ida what she knew about it."
"She said, 'Most zoo keepers, circus trainers, safari guides, jungle loggers, and villagers trying to keep them out of their gardens agree that elephants neither forget nor forgive."'
Notice how well Nelly could, almost to a T, absorb and recite auditory information.
Just in case one is wondering if that 'T' is the same as Prudence Eberton's middle initial, it's not.
Jim, on the other hand, was just the opposite. If he didn't write down what to do, where to go, and when to do it, he was likely to forget it. Auditory information often went in one ear and straight out the other unimpeded.
Jim would forget his head if it weren't attached. Sorry for the cliché, but it was nevertheless true. He was way too absorbed thinking about and playing sports, so much so that the rest of his life seemed like an incidental inconvenience—except, of course, being best friends with Nelly, a full-time occupation in itself.
As Nelly stepped into the room to begin, Jim sat up from lounging on his bed to face her, stretched, then tiredly put his hands together in his lap to listen.
After a long pause, 'to quiet the audience,' Nelly began a monologue-style performance of the skit she had been working on:
....
Evie and L'Jay at Dinnertime
Evie: serving up a heaping portion of sauerkraut and sausages for L'Jay whose napkin is tucked into his shirt like a bib
"L'Jay, do you remember the time the clown riding an elephant in the circus parade looked right at me and shouted, "This pachyderm has a great memory!"
L'Jay: digging himself into a hole with his fork
"First of all, Evie, 'No,' and, second of all, please sit down before the food gets cold."
Evie: Evie and L'Jay laughing simultaneously
....
Jim didn't get the joke. The general concept was fine, but it was missing the ironic comparison to L'Jay's memory that the audience would be anticipating. Plus, he wasn't sure if the punch line either made any sense or was a surprise. Jim mentally ran through the lines himself before reluctantly telling Nelly, "You're right, it's not funny."
Nelly acted hurt, just as Jim knew she would. "You could have at least tried to laugh," she pouted.
Jim responded incredulously with L'Jay's class-clown voice, "But, Miss Evie, why should I hav'ta laugh at sum'thin if it ain't funny?"
At that, Nelly stomped her foot and insisted, "Okay, then, Mr. Know-It-All, try this one on for size."
....
Evie and L'Jay Again at Dinnertime
Evie: again serving up a heaping portion of sauerkraut and sausages for L'Jay whose napkin is tucked into his shirt like a bib
"L'Jay, remember the time you stepped in elephant poop at the circus. And everyone thought it was hilarious, but you."
L'Jay: pathetically trying to clean up the mess with his fork
"First of all, Evie, I have no recollection of that because I always forget everything that is most important to the most important person in my life, and second of all, please sit down before you stab me in the chest with my own dinner knife."
Evie: poised with wiggling fingers to force a laugh out of L'Jay by tickling him
....
Jim had no doubt that Nelly fully intended to follow through with her threat, to tickle him, that is, so he turned away defensively and resumed cramming for the exam. Over his shoulder, he 'laissez-faire-ly' commented, "Nope, Nelly, still not funny, better keep working on it."
At that, Nelly froze in full tickle mode like a chiseled ice sculpture. With a frosty tone of voice, she apologized, emphasizing each word in turn, "Sorry. To. Bother. You. Jim."
Then, as if treading cautiously upon the slippery ice of a winter pond, Nelly made her way across the room to grab hold of the doorframe for balance. She turned her head back towards Jim and resorted to their tried-and-true childhood call-and-response farewell. She chirped like a bluebird, "See ya soon, Macaroon."
But Jim was already buried alive under an avalanche of hard, cold facts, enigmatic figureheads with unpronounceable names, historic places that required the consultation of an atlas, and legal precedents that had changed the course of civilization, with no way to dig himself out. Jim half-mumbled back at Nelly, without glancing up, "See ya sooner, you big Babooner."
Nelly was reluctant to leave on that deflated note. But, she didn't know what she could say or do to bring the old, happy, funny Jim back again.
So, giving up with a shrug, Nelly walked out of Jim's bedroom to resume working on her latest Evie and L'Jay skit, 'Elephants Never Forget.' It was either do that or succumb to dark, lurking thoughts of suicide. Fortunately, on that particular day, Nelly wasn't in the mood for any serious over-the-top drama; maybe tomorrow.
Less than thirty seconds later, Nelly reappeared in the doorway to bluntly state, "Jim, what's not funny is my best friend leaving me here all alone while he goes away to college. That's what's not funny!"
However, Jim was so overwhelmed with studying that he was no longer listening.
Nelly felt sad. She cried inside, 'What's to become of poor Evie if L'Jay up and leaves her?'
So, as things turned out, it was during Ida's practice, college-level lecture, when Jim finally decided to kill off Evie and L'Jay from Minneapolis, for good. But it wasn't going to be easy. He dreaded bringing up the subject with Nelly and fretted, 'She will never forgive me.'
And as it also turned out, the heartbreaking demise of Evie and L'Jay became a life-long sore subject for Nelly, one she never wanted to talk about.
It's a good thing Jim knew Nelly better than any other person on earth, because he understood that was how she dealt with grief—by completely ignoring it.
Though Jim felt bad about abandoning the act, he had his own life to live outside the bonds of their friendship, right? He figured, 'She'll get over it.'
But Nelly never really did. She just got good at hiding how betrayed she felt by the abrupt way L'Jay slammed the door on Evie, on his way out to college.
To change the subject, the bitterness and resentment Jim felt toward his grandmother, Prudence, had to come from somewhere, right?
"Duck soup, and no quack about it," Nelly blithely commented before thoughtfully elucidating, "You know, Master James, that 'somewhere' is Prudence T. Eberton's authoritarian control over every aspect of your life."
Jim's apt response to that was, "Huh?" He immediately grew suspicious that Nelly had been discussing his problems concerning his grandmother with Ida behind his back.
"I'll 'huh' you, Mister," Nelly consternated back at him. "You do know that 'my' answer fits 'your' bill to a T, don't you?"
Notice that Nelly had referenced Prudence's middle initial. So now, one might once again inquire, "What does the T stand for?"
And, "None of your damn business," would still be the answer.
* *
Nelly, the burlesque actress, was not nearly as dizzy as she seemed. It's just that, while her I's and Q's soared high above, she couldn't seem to find her way through a written paragraph without getting lost, which made it extremely difficult, not to mention embarrassing, for her to learn new scripts from scratch.
However, if some obliging person agreed to read the unfamiliar script aloud to her, Nelly could quickly memorize not only her lines but also all the other parts as well. Unfortunately, her uncanny ability proved highly annoying to some of her fellow cast members, whose flubs Nelly constantly corrected during rehearsals.
One busty, burlesque co-actress who went by the suggestive stage name 'Virginia Fairgame' detested being in Nelly's presence during rehearsals. One Friday afternoon in June, she angrily stormed out of dress rehearsal, in full costume, down from the gas-lit stage, up the center aisle, through the darkened concession hall, and straight out the front entrance doors of the Gayety Theatre into the glaring afternoon sunshine and screamed, "Damn you, Nelly Jones!"
It seems that Miss Fairgame also had problems learning her scripts from scratch, but her reason, unlike Nelly's, was excessive drinking.
To culminate the unpleasant interruption to that critical last day of rehearsals, Virginia strode right back into the theater with head held high. Whereupon, she changed the wording of her well-worn declaration, "I detest being on the same stage as Nelly," to "I refuse to be on the same stage with that bitch!" Whereupon, she quit.
Also, whereupon, the extremely stick-thin, long-legged director, Lorenz Langweiler, set aside his bullhorn, undraped himself from across the aisle seats of the first two rows, tossed his marked-up copy of the script in a shower of pages into the air, and yelled, "What am I supposed to do with that?"
Virginia just shrugged and marched straight out of the theater—only to march stoically right back in moments later to retrieve her street clothes and handbag from her dressing room.
After helplessly watching one of his headliners single-handedly cripple the production during the very last rehearsal before opening day, Lorenz, who wore a monocle and a beret for effect, walked directly up to the stage via the orchestra pit. He was so tall that his chin came up to the deck. He beckoned Nelly over to him by crooking his long, bony index finger at her.
Obeying his directive, Nelly squinted downward through the dusty glare of the forestage lights. She was taken aback by how ghastly his seemingly disembodied head looked. "Yes, Sir?" she tremulously responded.
When the ghoulish countenance with one blinding glassy eye, the other covered by a dark patch of shadow, wrinkled up its nose, Nelly saw that it had made a bad mistake trimming its handlebar mustache. One side sorely mismatched the other. She wanted to run to her dressing room to grab a pair of scissors. 'That mess has to be fixed immediately,' she thought.
"Can't it wait?" Nelly implored the director, "I have to go to my dressing room to get something very important."
"No, it cannot wait, Miss Jones."
"Okay, then, if you insist, but don't blame me if you get soup on one side of your mustache and not the other."
Putting his twig-like fingers up to evaluate the situation, Lorenz snapped, "You've gone and done it this time, Miss Jones. You know I can't afford understudies for this production. So, now, you have to play both parts at tomorrow afternoon's opening matinee. Is that clear?"
At that, Nelly jumped up and down with excitement, "Who would have thought I could've gotten two roles for the price of one!"
* *
Nelly was infamous for the random bits of mental scrap that spun out of her brain while it was racing around in erratic circles, things which most people discarded, knowing they could always look it up later if need be.
At any given moment, Nelly might recite a completely unsolicited fact such as: there are over 80 different kinds of click-bugs in Maryland, or that the number 9 times-table can easily be calculated using your fingers as an abacus or by lining up the numbers 0-4 in a column next to the numbers 9-5, or that sailors and pirates used jam to prevent scurvy.
Worrisomely, however, Nelly's typically high spirits could take a hard, fast tumble downhill during times of crisis—like when her uncle was beaten to death by anti-Jewish thugs and his body left on a pile of trash in a blind alley. Consequently, she was afraid to leave the house.
It was times like those that could precipitate Nelly becoming hyper-sensitive to every single little thing happening simultaneously around her.
It was times like those when the dark morbidities, offering refuge in the afterlife, rose from their all too shallow graves.
It was times like those when being alive was just too hard for Nelly to take.
And, at times like those, the only way for Nelly to climb out of the abyss was through humor.
For instance, one time, when talking to Jim about her unpredictable oversensitivity to the multitude of things happening simultaneously around her, Nelly drawled like a cowboy out riding on the range, "It's jes that there's awl-ways-way-too-many-of-em-ornery-doggies for me to get corralled at one time."
Responding, as if he were a wild-west saloonkeeper, Jim first poured, then slid a pretend tumbler of rot-gut whiskey down the surface of the bar to her, before commiserating, "Sorry to hear that, partner. Take four slugs of that twice every hour for four consecutive hours. It'll cure what ails you. But, please leave a tip for me in advance."
At that, Nelly firmly slapped her hand down on the imaginary countertop and knowingly whispered, "Bluebell, in the fourth, by a length, at Pimlico tomorrow—a sure bet, with great odds."
So, by tossing her a throw-away line, Jim was able to pull Nelly out of the maelstrom into which she had fallen.
But, honestly, Jim wasn't worried that Nelly would actually follow through with one of her threats to off herself. Of course not, because she absolutely abhorred playing any role that involved corpses of any kind. In fact, one time, while auditioning for a new act, she refused the part of a female burlesque version of Dracula, for a scene which involved dead men returning home to their coffins at sunrise with big smiles on their faces.
Not only that, Nelly was not about to take a chance that her hair would be mussed up or her clothes bloodied for the police column pictures in the next morning's yellow papers. She pre-visualized the headline "Burlesque Actress Makes Mess of Own Suicide" which heightened her concerns that the written 'review of her performance' would be equally as scathing.
Jim was relieved that Nelly would never do such a horrible thing to herself, mainly because she would probably come back to haunt him, not as herself, but as Evie. And the ghost of Evie, from Minneapolis, would surely try to scare him into resurrecting the L'Jay character he thought he had so successfully put to rest.
All kidding aside, Jim never wanted anything bad to happen to Nelly and would always do whatever it took to make her happy—within reason, of course.
Now, just in case one has started to wonder if this story is really more about Nelly than Jim—rest assured, "IT'S NOT!"
It's just that Nelly played such a big role in Jim's life that one might need to understand her to fully know him.
Taking a well-earned breather away from Nelly's pervasive presence was not the reason going far away to college in St. Louis felt so liberating to Jim. The truth was, more than anything else, Jim yearned to get as far away as possible from his ruthless, selfish grandmother, Prudence, who acted as if she owned him.
Equally important, although he was almost grown-up, Jim didn't yet know who he was. It was as if he had been born with amnesia of a lost past that should have happened but never did. His true self had been stolen from him by circumstances beyond his control. Then, before he was old enough to even have his first memory, he was imprisoned in a life that wasn't his.
The sequestered life little Jimmy had been thrust into was one of ostentatious wealth and luxury at a palatial estate on Mount Vernon Square in Baltimore, known as Eberton House. The Queen of Eberton House and all of Baltimore High Society, Prudence T. Eberton, bestowed upon him the name James—James Horatio Eberton, her very own, handsome and athletic grandson, who could do no wrong in public but never seemed to please her in private, except at a steep price to his self-respect and pride.
The supercilious Prudence T. Eberton demanded subservient obedience from all under her rule, including her grandson, James. Yet to him, exclusively, her only descendant and heir to the Eberton family fortune, she gave everything a person could possibly wish for, except for freedom and self-reliance—and, of course, his real identity.
Simply put, Jim needed to answer somehow his innermost existential question, "Who am I, truly?" and as the Gateway College catalogue advertised 'broaden his horizons and build a secure future.'
Jim was utterly confident that his best friend, Nelly, would still be there for him when he returned. Besides, Jim enjoyed writing letters, so that's how he planned to keep Nelly in the loop about everything that happened to him in St. Louis. The biggest problem with that form of communication was Nelly's difficulty with reading and writing. So, most likely, Jim would have to settle for a one-way correspondence, unless she could arrange for someone to help her through the process.
But, unsurprisingly, Nelly easily found a way around that obstacle in no time flat—by telegraph.
After creating a splash upon her debut appearance at the telegraph office nearest to the Gayety Theater, Nelly, fully made up and dressed to the nines, leaned toward the hapless operator with pursed, painted lips to clearly and slowly annunciate her message. Her new admirer immediately started banging away, rapidly clicking out every single word, dit-by-dash-by-dot, across 800 miles of telegraph wire.
Putting an encouraging hand on the fellow's shoulder, Nelly purred, "Hey, what's the rush, darling. We have all day, don't we?"
The flushed telegrapher tugged on his overheated collar to answer, "Not really, Ma'am, it's always slam-bam around here."
To which Nelly responded, "Okay, then, big guy, we better get right to it."
Problematically speaking, however, it took a whole hell of a lot of dits, dashes, and dots to convey everything Nelly wanted to say to Jim, her best friend, whom she dearly missed.
That's why, early in Jim's tenure at college, Nelly vigorously and repeatedly went at it for almost an entire hour with the exhausted telegrapher. At the same time, a long queue of other Western Union customers wound out the door onto the sidewalk behind her. Some made rude comments, others left in a disgruntled huff, and one even called the police. So, it didn't take long for Nelly to be restricted to five minutes by the head honchos at the telegraph company's main office. That mandatory time limit left both Nelly and the operators on duty extremely frustrated.
Jim was also sure that while he was away at the 'Lou' attending school, Prudence would try to maintain her control over him. But, at least she wouldn't be breathing down his neck day and night.
He figured that he could slide by in law school by focusing on some lesser aspect of jurisprudence, which would facilitate the over-stuffing of a personal bank account accessible only to him, without requiring his grandmother's stingy signature—and hopefully, without having to work for the money in the first place. Perhaps his specialized area of study should be life insurance or some similar area of legal pick-pocketry.
"How about negotiating ransom payments for kidnappers?"
Nelly came up with that one while buying a bag of jellybeans for Jim to munch on during his long train ride to St. Louis. Unlike her, he always set the black ones aside to eat later, and then only in a pinch.
Well aware of Jim's ambivalence towards liquorice candy, Nelly said to him, "Be sure to save the black ones for when I come to see you."
"Sure thing," Jim responded unenthusiastically. He didn't savor jellybeans nearly as much as Nelly did, especially not the black ones. And, he certainly wasn't going to hold his breath waiting for her to visit him at college. She was way too busy running in circles, creating chaos, and forgetting which end was up for that ever to happen.
But Nelly always meant well and would be there for him in the event all his chips were lost and the cold rain outside wouldn't let up for weeks on end. Jim could depend on Nelly's support. That's what really mattered anyway, right? Jim and Nelly, best friends, for better or for worse, till death do us part. He couldn't imagine a life without her—always goofing around with him and sticking her nose in his business when he didn't want her to. But, that's just what Nelly was like, and had been ever since they were kids living on opposite sides of the entrance drive leading through the two stately lions guarding the front gates of the palatial Eberton House Estate, on Mount Vernon Square, in downtown Baltimore.
Just thinking about it made Jim kind of sad. But there was no way it was going to keep him from going away to college in St. Louis—no damn way.
Jim felt that he didn't have to worry about his choice of careers because when his grandmother, Prudence, finally gave up the ghost, he stood to inherit the Eberton family fortune, which the Eberton Steamship Company had accumulated. The firm built and operated a fleet of freighters, hauling Allegany County coal and other goods from Baltimore as far west as St. Louis via the Mississippi River and to points South, from which they brought cotton, rice, bourbon, and anti-Yankee vitriol by the boatload.
Besides, enrolling as a law student at Gateway College in St. Louis was just a pretext for Jim to do what he really wanted to do anyway, and that was to play sports, especially intercollegiate football.
However, young Jim had no idea, before leaving on the train to St. Louis that the success of the Gateway College football program was due largely to the Mississippi River gamblers who were raking in the dough by taking odds on the games, and in return, were slipping big bags of it under the table, to various, as of yet, unnamed individuals. And, they were not above paying for a ringer or two to be included in the contests when it suited them.
Suffice it to say, regardless of its underworld connections, and maybe because of them, Gateway had an excellent football program, and the prospect of playing on that team was something that Jim found to be very motivating, indeed.
For that to happen, Jim had to pretend he wanted to become a lawyer. That was the deal. His grandmother, Prudence, who administered the mighty Big E checkbook and thus controlled the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of people in both Baltimore and St. Louis, insisted that her grandson, James, pursue a law degree. That was not to mention the large endowment she secretly offered the school administrators if they would disregard Jim's not-so-stellar academic performance. But about his performance on the football field, she was completely ambivalent.
It is important to note, once again, that Prudence continually threatened to disinherit Jim if he didn't comply with her wishes. Therefore, Jim's particular career choice was pre-ordained because her father, Maryland State Senator Theodore H. Eberton, had been a prominent Southern-leaning lawmaker during the tumultuous years leading up to the Civil War. His father, before him, had been a powerful states-rights judge sitting on the high court in Annapolis in the late 1700s. So as far as Prudence was concerned, the matter was closed. Jurisprudence was a family tradition that Jim had to abide by, and he had no say in the decision—if he wanted to inherit the Eberton family fortune.
The onus and pressure were always on Jim to meet his grandmother's expectations. And the impractically high standards that Prudence demanded of her grandson were almost impossible for him to attain.
Ida, at least, understood the reasons behind Jim's rebelliousness, his cursing, and general mischievousness, which were considered unacceptable behaviors for someone of his social standing.
As Ida had so succinctly put it to her scholarly wheelchair-bound father, "Jim's rebellious behavior can be attributed to his grandmother's unrealistically high standards, and her complete lack of empathy for his needs, and her coercive meddling in every aspect of his personal life."
Ida's dear, debilitated father responded by setting aside the black jellybeans he was snacking on to slowly roll his creaky, high-backed, wooden wheelchair to the overflowing bookcase in his study. Then, using the walking cane he kept carefully hung from the armrest, he shakily pointed up to a rather hefty cloth-bound publication titled 1875 Spring Grove Hospital Cyclopedia. "Please get that book down for me, Ida, dear," he instructed. "In it, you will find what I believe is the key to fully understanding your young Mr. Eberton."
But, unknown to the old thinker, his daughter, Ida, had already opened a different copy of that same cyclopedia many, many, many times before—to one particular photographic illustration printed on page 152.
So, Jim, the law student, had a plan, but it came with a fatal flaw—he hated the long hours spent in lecture halls and the all-nighters studying for exams. Not to mention his embarrassing struggles with legal jargon, which often elicited ripples of quiet laughter from his more well-spoken classmates. In moot court, he once passionately made a decisive point, only to realize he was arguing for the wrong side. And he was intimidated by his professors, who, using the Socratic Method, would randomly summon students to recite case law on command.
Jim was also at his grandmother's beck and call to return home to Baltimore during all scheduled class breaks and lest he should forget, her annual Eberton House birthday celebration at which Jim's appearance in formal attire was a strict requirement.
To make things completely unbearable, during those precious times off school when his classmates were away having fun, Jim had to suffer through his grandmother's mandatory social events, at which she happily played the scheming matchmaker, determined that her grandson, James, meet and marry a suitable, well-endowed debutante.
But Jim wasn't in the market for a pretty, witty, and well-mannered 'Belle of the Ball,' Southern or otherwise. That became especially true in his sophomore year after he met a stunning part-Cherokee, part-Spanish, part-Negro two-step accordion virtuoso who was also the back-up singer in her aunt and uncle's two-step band, the Sweets Family, which regularly performed at the St. Louis Fairgrounds Dance Pavilion. That talented young musician went by the name Little Sweets, and she was in every way the polar opposite of Queen Prudence's marriageable princesses.
Jim was intelligent, but not in the academic sense of the word. He lacked the educational self-discipline necessary for academic merit. But, on the other hand, he abounded in the physical self-discipline needed for excellence in sports. That was due, not only to his natural ability, but also to the rigorous physical training that Ida had provided for him as part of his at-home, private education.
Becoming a law student at Gateway College in St. Louis, Missouri, was really just a pretext for Jim's real ambition, to play football for the Gateway College team, the Steamers, which was going strong in 1894.
Well, that ambition was resolved in only about two minutes, starting from the moment he received the opening kick of the first game, to start the season, at home.
After effortlessly catching the ball, which threatened to sail over his head, by running backwards, Jim then pivoted back up the field, gaining speed as he darted past the fifty-yard-line, weaving and bobbing, twisting and turning his way through the flailing arms of the hapless tacklers on the opposing team.
At about the twenty-yard mark, Jim was almost pinned against the sideline by a pair of defending linebackers. So, he cleverly doubled back, reversed field in a wide loop at full gallop, the ball securely cradled in the crook of his arm with a wide-open lane to the end zone.
Almost reaching the one-yard line and prematurely celebrating his amazing feat, Jim came face-to-face with a huge defensive safety appearing seemingly out of nowhere. The opposing player was built like the cross between a grizzly bear and a steam-operated bulldozer. He plowed headfirst into Jim, then, without breaking stride, snatched up the fumbled ball and ran it back downfield to score a touchdown, which brought the roaring crowd to its feet.
Jim didn't hear the applause because he was down for the count. But before the scene faded to black, Jim caught a brief glimpse of the leather-helmeted fellow's grim face. He was missing a front tooth, and his nose, broken many times, looked like a gnarled tree root busting through concrete. And, the guy's fierce eyes were aimed directly at him like the bore holes of loaded cannons.
When the sharp whiplash caused by a whiff of ammonia-based smelling salts brought Jim unceremoniously back to consciousness, he had no earthly idea what continent he was on, what city he was in, or even his own name. It took him a long, woozy moment to remember; 'Jim...Eberton, okay, Saint Louie, right, Gateway College, law school, football team, opening kick...Shit.'
Still lying immobilized on the turf, flat on his back, with legs splayed across the goal line, Jim stared up at the goalposts. From his perspective, they looked like church spires angling off towards a distant point somewhere in the heavens.
Jim was carried off the field on a stretcher by white-coated attendants, past the press box, which was jammed with sports reporters crowded at the wooden rail separating them from the stadium aisle. They stood together in observant silence, with reams of clever analogies percolating in their overactive brains.
Through eyes blurry from the severe concussion he had just sustained, Jim saw a pale, almost vaporous-looking man with a gigantic nose sitting alone on one of the pressbox benches. The odd fellow looked like a vintage, sack-coated flat-capper from the mid-1800s. He held a shorthand notebook in one hand and in the other a stubby pencil paused in mid-sentence.
Jim thought that maybe he was just some unflappable old reporter who chose to remain seated. But then, the wrinkle-faced scribner with the incredibly large sniffer looked directly at Jim and mouthed the words, "I knew your father."
Honest-to-goodness, that's what it looked like to Jim. However, he couldn't stop playing around with alternative lip reading to spoken-English combinations like: 'I'll sue you fucker,' or perhaps it was 'I woo new farmers.' Maybe it was, 'I'll rue yawn flawser.' No, definitely not that one.
Believing he might be dreaming, Jim squinched his eyes tightly shut, then opened them again.
The man was gone, and so was Jim's intercollegiate football career due to the head injury he had just sustained.
Although the recreational activity was equally dangerous in some ways, after giving up football, Jim decided to join a bicycle club. In 1894, the bicycle craze was at its apex all around the nation, but especially in St. Louis, which some considered to be the epicenter for the two-wheeled amusement scandalizing the country. Throughout the city, carefree women were speeding through the streets, wearing inappropriate cycling outfits, instead of cleaning house and preparing dinner for their husbands.
Oh, my God, one elderly Catholic woman even rode her bicycle to Mass three times a week, wearing her church dress, veil, and all. And not only that, the unwelcome new mode of transportation made for lots of spooked horses and runaway wagons. No one should have to contend with that, should they?
****
End of Prologue