when she was a girl. Aurora’s was lustreware, golden as her hair. The shine had tarnished on one side and Aurora always ate with the shine out, the tarnish turned towards her so no one would see, even though it was only them in the room. And Mama ate from the pot, crying again, as she often cried over her supper since Papa and Harry died.
They sat in a row to put their hair up in rags: Mama doing Aurora; Aurora doing Clover; Clover, Bella. Then the girls climbed into the big bed under the gold silk coverlet, last remnant of home, and Mama blew out the lamp. She lay along the end of the bed warming their feet and talking for a while, as she had always done, telling them stories of her life on the circuit and her miserable childhood in Madison, Wisconsin with Aunt Queen, who would hardly ever let her have a bath. Tonight she made plans for costumes and new songs and ways to keep the audience tacked to the edge of their seats, though the girls were only openers, until she had talked out her excitement and could rest. She ended: ‘One week with the Star Union, a good start with a good company—we’re on our way. Go to sleep, my clever girls, your dear papa is looking down from heaven on his daughters, with our little Harry in his arms, warm and peaceful and so happy to be together.’
She lay at their feet, murmuring of Harry’s blond silk curls, how his darling sweetness bound them together—and how she should have ate better while expecting, or not run the last bit uphill with the water pail that one day when she cramped up, or what other thing she had done to leave him so weak that the pneumonia could take hold and carry him off.
She let herself sigh and cry then, and they all lay still in the cooling room, frost creeping over the window like a blind.
But Clover could not sleep. It was funny how that stage name left her out. Belle–Aurora with a blank space in the middle, because she was the blank among them, really. Clover turned again in the bed, making the others turn, and put her arm over Bella this time, who slid backwards into Clover’s knees and thighs more tightly, warm under the gold silk. Mama had been right to bring the coverlet, though it had to be tied so tight to pack into the trunk every morning. They were getting faster at packing. Rags out of their hair, stays tied, stockings on, petticoats, skirts and waists, boots rubbed and retied—there was a complicated sequence to dressing, and the peacefulness of thinking about it let Clover drift away.
Moth-Girls
Later, when Mama tiptoed out to knock on Sybil’s door, Aurora woke. She lay curled beside her sisters, thinking of what they would do tomorrow, how it would go. Down the hall she could hear the women comparing money outside Sybil’s door before going down to the hotel bar by the back stairs, to get blissfully drunk on two of the last twenty dollars. The Italian Boys came down the hall and joined them as they went, so it sounded like to be a cheerful evening all around.
Wakened by the noise, Bella begged for a fairy story, as she used to when she was small.
‘You are on the boards now, too old for fairy tales,’ Aurora said. But she looked around the darkness for something to tell. Nothing, nothing—‘Well, there, under the windowsill, in the shadows, is a clutch of moth fairies’ eggs. They will hatch out soon into a little troop of moth-girls in feathery dresses, dancing in and out of the candlelight and trying not to get singed …’ Aurora felt Bella’s knees cosy closer into Clover’s, feet tucked under her bony heels; she spoke softer as Bella’s breath slowed, sinking to sleep again, thinking of moth-girls, or maybe that boy—Nando?—who flew round the room on a flagpole broom.
Aurora slid her arm from where it had gone numb under Clover’s neck and hugged her more tightly round her narrow waist.
They would do it in one and charm the house. They could do that, easy.
2.
First Night
JANUARY 1912
The Empress, Fort Macleod
… and there we were, not on the list.
FRED ASTAIRE
Snowlit wind, brilliant with ice-chips, swirled them along paths shovelled like tunnels through the drifts. Without the bunched baby-doll petticoats, the cold cut sharper. Aurora could feel it chafing to bright red