Hilary and the Beasts, Part 1

January 1930

Hilary Booth-Bloom looked out over her garden and shivered, throwing her arms around herself in the raw Pittsburgh air. Once upon a time, she shared a warm, sunny rooftop garden, filled with brilliant, perfectly-culled roses of every color in the rainbow, on top of the glittering Valiant Journey Apartment Complex in New York with her…with her then-husband and acting partner Jeffrey Singer. She’d had everything - money, glamour, a theatrical career, a husband who adored her.  Now, she barely had two squares of dirt and yellowed weeds in the back of a tattered brownstone built of faded red brick on a quiet residential street in Pittsburgh.

Once, her father Mackie Bloom had a palatial penthouse in New York, her two youngest siblings Betty and C.J attended the finest colleges, she held elegant parties dressed in stunning gowns attended by all of the best people, and her middle sister Maple held court with champagne and dancing the Charleston in scandalously short dresses that shocked their actor father Mackie. Mackie was known for his commanding portrayals of great men in Shakespeare and other classical literature. He built a substantial portfolio…then lost every last bit of it on bad investments when the Stock Market took its dive three months before.

The betrayal happened so fast, she was still taking it all in. The discovery that Jeffery, her beautiful, dashing, elegant, devoted Jeffery, had married another woman. She would be his acting partner now. That..that witch Pavla Nemcova handed her a letter, claiming he approved. He said he could explain, but there was no explanation, not from him or that charlatan of a Sherwood manager or high-minded Comstock secretary. She’d walked away from him, walked away from Victor’s bleating about Europe and Scott’s silver-tongued deceptions, walked away before he could even reveal the palatial home he supposedly bought for her. It wasn’t hers anymore. It was his and that…that Czech trollop’s.

To say their current home was far from her father’s elegant Fifth Avenue address was to say a barn was different from a palace. The sagging black shingle roof leaked. The jagged plaster walls were patched and repatched. No amount of polishing could make the old tile floor in the kitchen sparkle. Yellowed windows showed nothing but dirt and patches of dying grass and broken glass. Hilary had sprayed three times, and she still saw mold in the bathroom and spiders in the kitchen. 

Thank heavens for Betty. Sweet, sensible Betty. She took hold of the household from the moment she stepped over the threshold from Vassar, carrying the one suitcase she brought. If she wasn’t sequestered in her room, writing fantasies and dreams to sell to The New Yorker and plays for local radio stations, she was making sure the laundry got done, the dishes were washed, their beds were made, and their dinner was on the table promptly at 6. And that was when that sweet little lawyer - Doug? - wasn’t trying to take her out again. She kept saying she was too busy, she was needed at home, and yet Doug hovered.

And then, there was Maple. The social butterfly, the lightning in a bottle. The one who had danced until dawn in smoke-filled speakeasies now pounded the boards, desperately looking for any work in a floozy-filled chorus line. It just about killed her. Maple had more class, sparkle, and talent in her little finger than most of those heifers did in their entire souls, and yet all those men saw was her voluptuous body.

Hilary was hovering around the kitchen that morning when Father got the telegram. Mackie gathered them around the breakfast table, his round face pink with pleasure under the glasses and bristling mustache. Even C.J, the sensible apple of his older sisters’ eye, his father’s doted-on only son, wolfed down the slightly burnt porridge with raisins Hilary made earlier as he peered around at the thin paper.

“Kids, this is it!” He slammed his big paw on the telegram. “I’m back on the Boards!”

Hilary leaned over his shoulder, pulling up her shapeless gray sweater. “The Liberty Theater on the other side of Pittsburgh? That old barn? It’s practically falling apart. Father, you can’t be serious.” 

“It’s work, isn’t it?” That roguish chubby-cheeked grin of his was wider than she’d seen it in months. “It’s ‘King Lear” Big part. I certainly know something about having daughters!” He sang what he hoped sounded like a deep, bass aria. She did enjoy hearing her father perform Shakespeare. Her late mother Anna always said he had the soul of a Barrymore in the body of a Victor Moore. 

“We’ll need to work on that, Father.” Betty bustled in, sporting her faded brown sprigged dress with the woolly patch on the hem. “We can’t have you forgetting lines during your big solo!” She leaned over to give him a kiss.

“Betty, my little one,” Mackie patted her hand, “if this works out, you and C.J will be back at Vassar and Carnegie Mellon in time for the spring session.”

“Oh Father, I’m not sure I want to go back.” Betty sliced apples and loaded them into a cracked bowl, then brought it to the table for her siblings. “I’m happy here. I’ve sold three stories to radio stations in the past month! Some of those new stations really like my work.”

“Radio?” Hilary wrinkled her aristocratic nose. “That upstart? Betty, I’ve read your plays. I’ve performed them. They’re worthy of the finest theaters in New York.”

“Maybe someday, I’ll get that far, Hilary.” She set out the salt and pepper before settling at the creaky old table. “Right now, I’m just happy to help put food on the table.”

C.J nodded, his mouth full of apple, cleft chin bobbing. “I don’t want to go back to Carnegie either, Dad. I’m learning more about machinery and wiring working at the Nixon Theater than I ever did sitting behind a desk at school.”

“Nonsense!” Hilary waved her porridge-covered spoon. “I want you both to finish your education. Christopher James, you are a genius with anything electrical. How you got the electricity working in this squalid house is beyond me. And Elizabeth Miranda, you have the makings of another Shakespeare in you. I’ve done readings of your plays. They are brilliant.”

“And you’ll be able to now.” Mackie went to the long black box of a phone. “I’m going to ring the Liberty up right now and tell them I’ll be over there. Where’s your sister, anyway? I told Maple I wanted everyone to hear this!”

“Sorry everyone!” She looked up in time to see a flaming orange whirlwind in a thin green coat dance through the door like an emerald tornado. “I just got back from The Crimson Follies. They’re talkin’ ‘bout usin’ me in their chorus line. The producer says if I’m really good, he’ll even give me a solo part!”

“Or if you show him more than just your legs.” Hilary sighed and pushed the burnished copper curls back from her middle sister’s flushed face, with its strong cheekbones so like their departed mother. “Anna Maple Bloom, you know what we talked about. I want you to marry a man who can take care of you. You’ll never find a wealthy suitor at a place that’s one step up from a flop house.”

Maple planted her long lacquered fingers on her shapely hips and let out that Brooklyn bray she’d somehow picked up from attending finishing school in New York. “I don’t see you lookin’ for work, and you’re the big star. Why are ya sittin’ here? ‘Cause of Jeff? What, are ya scared? That ain’t like you, Hilary.”

Mackie saw Hilary’s face darken into pure red rage and knew when to change the subject. “Maple, I just got a good job on the other side of town. How about you give your old dad a great big kiss and help to see him off?”

“A job?” Maple beamed ear to ear and folded her father in the biggest hug she could manage. “Dad, that’s great! I know you’ve been wanting to get back on the boards. I’m so proud of you! You’ll send us tickets to openin’ night, of course. I could even get my blue beaded dress out of mothballs, the one that sounds like maracas when I walk.” 

“Well,” gasped Mackie under his middle daughter’s crushing arms, “it won’t happen if you don’t let me go!”

“Oooh, sorry Dad!” She almost literally dropped him on the floor. “Sometimes, I forget myself, you know?”

“Yeah.” He gathered his breath, gasping like a beached whale. “Hey,” he added as he finally found words again, “if this works out, I could bring you kids something special after the opening. Something you’ve all been wanting.”

“Tools.” C.J reached for the orange juice. “I need new wire cutters and a screwdriver.” 

“A dress!” Maple twirled in her green wool day outfit. “Maybe one’a them pretty, floaty things with the new long hemlines I saw on a mannequin at the Kauffmann’s window downtown.” 

“Books!” Betty grinned. “I’ve read all the books I own three times, and most of the books in the library down the street.”

Mackie looked up at his eldest daughter as she finished her breakfast. “What about you, Hilary? Dress for you, too? Tickets to a play?”

“Oh Dad, you know I’m against seeing a show I’m not in.” Hilary turned to her bare garden. “Maybe…a rose? I don’t know where you’d find one in this weather, but…I think I just need…something beautiful. Jeff…he used to love roses. We planted them together…”

Mackie reached up and rubbed his oldest daughter’s shaking shoulder. “Sweetheart, I’ll find you the most beautiful, the sweetest, the brightest rose in all of Pittsburgh.” 

She wiped fiercely at the eyes that threatened to spill over, not wanting to hear the teasing from Maple and C.J. “Thank you, Father. Now,” she pushed away from the table, “let’s get these dishes clean, put the food away, and see if we can find something suitable for the grandest King Lear in all of Pittsburgh to reclaim his throne! And for heaven’s sake, C.J, don’t gulp your orange juice like that. You’ll choke!”

Mackie left the next day. Hilary found his only remaining good suit and managed to dredge up enough money to have it pressed. C.J got Mackie’s rustbucket Ford, the only car he’d been able to retain, working, at least long enough to get his father to the theater. Betty gave him sandwiches and tea in a basket for the ride, and Maple smothered him with many hugs and kisses. 

“Hilary, Betty,” he gave them hugs after Maple and C.J let go, “you two are in charge of the household while I’m gone. See if you can head off the bill collectors. Tell ‘em I’ll pay them as soon as this job is over. C.J, I want you to look at the boiler downstairs. It’s been sputtering again. Maple, keep looking for work. You’ll find something. I did!”

They all waved as he climbed into their rusted old Ford. It took almost five minutes for the engine to finally turn over. When it did, it lurched out of sight, leaving the four of them to wave after him.