cool stare, must have made it seem a good idea to comply. His flat-pouched eyes never leaving her face, Cleveland had forked out three ten-dollar bills. By rights it should have been $25. Being cancelled was a terrible blow, but she was extremely glad to be away from that shocking hypocrite. And a coward, and a bad judge of performance, she said to herself, not proud of getting the money out of him, but relieved to have it in Mama’s grouch-bag, since train tickets to Helena had taken all the rest. She leaned her forehead on the cracked green leather to stare out the window above the frost. Amateur-night, amateur-night, the clacking wheels said, but riding over a siding the rhythm altered, and she made it turn into we-will-be-better.
Flora woke from a doze and looked around the jouncing carriage: Aurora, Bella—where was Clover? Oh, here, sleeping beside her, almost invisible under the ulster but keeping Flora’s right side cozy and sheltered from the window’s ice. She had been dreaming of the girls when Bella was tiny—in Medstead, it must have been, one school before Paddockwood. Dreaming of Arthur, not yet succumbed to melancholy, blowing bubbles into bright sun to propound some scientific principle to his class. They ought not to have moved from there, but bubbles do burst, no matter how carefully one touches them. Now back to the States—Flora’s drowsy mind veered off from failure and drifted to her daughters again: dear Clover who would never leave her; Bella, the darling girl; her first-born Aurora whose beauty and talent must shine through and take the girls to the top regardless of stupidity in high places or vicissitudes so far, and never burlesque, not for her girls. Talent would out, cream would rise, a thousand a week quite soon.
Afterwards they slept, leaning on each other’s shoulders as comfortably as they could; then Bella changed seats to lay her head on Aurora’s lap. Even in the dusk, and later in clear, moon-relieved darkness, Aurora could see the hills marching south along with the train track, how they folded, alternating patches of shadow and pale moon-grey, until the folds gradually turned into mountains. When the train shifted on the track she saw her reflection in the window in the darkness—her face looked beautiful, but that was just the angle, and the darkness. She could see herself better in the crooked mirror of Clover’s and Bella’s eyes. They saw her true face, not this train-window beauty or the stage-makeup looks, and kept her from thinking too much of herself.
‘My sweet friend Sybil went on the burlesque for a while,’ Mama had said earlier, in the peace of the evening train. ‘I went too, once, when we were broke. If it looked safe, she would toss her garters into the audience and they’d throw money back—once in a way she’d leave off her stockings, but that got her a night in jail in Dubuque. Of course she wasn’t charged as Sybil Sutley: if she’d played under her right billing, her value on the medium-time would have been lowered, you see? Many people did it from time to time, went to burlesque when the wolf was at the door. We don’t look down on them for it. You do what you have to do to get by. She went under the name of Saunders, Saucy Saunders.’
‘We should have tried to stay in Paddockwood,’ Clover said, before she thought.
‘How can you say so!’ Mama took her up quickly. Clover looked away. ‘You’d rather have the life of a farm woman? Ought I to have looked about for a farmer? You know I would have done it if I’d thought it for the best.’
All three girls shook their heads quickly. Mama had not been good at the ordinary work of householding in any of Papa’s teaching posts. Even in Paddockwood, where they’d lasted four years.
Mama made delicious macaroons, if they could get coconut. If they had eggs—if the chickens had not all died. Aurora gave a quick hoot of laughter, but bobbed her head at Mama to apologize, because she was no kind of good at all that herself and she completely loathed chickens, spiteful creatures who pecked at each other’s corpses while you were trying to pluck them. Clover had a light hand with pastry, Bella made fudge. But if the choice was worry and turmoil and travel, or staying in one place forever with the chickens and the milking pail, Aurora was happy to be