Soap Bubbles Read online

  Delly watched Danny Kaye sing about Thumbelina and the Ugly Duckling and fall in love with a ballerina. The ballerina looked like her mother, Carolyn Ann, only Mommy played the piano.

  Delly knew that her mother had been born in Chicago, not Copenhagen. Her father, William, was a photographer, not a person who fixed shoes and made up stories like Hans Christian Andersen did. And Daddy was Jewish, not Christian. Mommy had been engaged to a man named Samuel Curtis. Then she went to a party with Samuel, met Daddy, and fell head over heels in love. “Whoopsie-do, what a somersault,” said Daddy. They got married and lived happily ever after, first in Chicago, then Bayside, Queens, New York, the World, the Universe.

  Someday Delly would fall head over heels in love and live happily ever after, whoopsie-do.

  The sisters waited for their ride home near the pictures of Robert Mitchum. Delly said she had a tummy ache and stretched out on the back seat of Mommy’s station wagon. Should she mention Mr. Hailey? No. She’d been a bad girl, eating all that candy. When she thought about it, she felt like throwing up again, so she concentrated on the movie. Her favorite part was the ugly duckling.

  Softly, she began to sing the ugly duckling song.

  Sami said, “What are you singing?”

  “A song from the movie. The one about the duck who becomes a swan. I remember the whole thing. Listen.”

  “Sometimes you’re such a baby.” Sami turned on the car radio and the Marcels drowned out Delly’s song like a siren overpowering a cricket.

  Delly didn’t know why, but she was glad she hadn’t said anything to Sami about Loretta Young and Delilah Old.

  Tonight, after supper, she’d make a wish. Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, grow up to be an actress.

  Whoopsie-do. Whoopsie . . .

  * * * * *

  “Doodah, doodah.” Eleven-year-old Delly Gold sang the words under her breath. “Bet my money on de boom-tail nag . . . dang! Bob-tail nag. Bob, not boom.”

  She scanned the school auditorium. There, right there in the first row, sat Mike Bleich, the cutest boy in school, who didn’t even know she was alive. After she sang, he’d know who she was. Maybe Mike would say, “You sounded best, Delly, and you looked good enough to eat.” Daddy always told Mom she looked good enough to eat.

  Seated on a chair, center-stage, Delly balanced a guitar on her lap. Her fifth grade’s Salute to Stephen Foster was in progress. At first Delly had a non-singing part. She was supposed to stand near the piano and pose as Jeannie with the light brown hair, even though Delly had a feeling Stephen Foster’s Jeannie didn’t look like a short fat Dutch kid.

  Teacher had loaned her guitar to Sami for “Camptown Races.” Then Sami caught the chicken pox.

  “Can you learn the music in three days, Delilah?” Teacher had said. “Or perhaps,” she’d added, her face hopeful, “your sister will be better in time for our show.”

  Delly practiced and practiced until Daddy, wearing earmuffs, walked into the living room. “That’s enough, Smarty-Pants,” he said. “You sound scrunch-delly-iscious.”

  Daddy had to photograph a jockey named Willie Shoemaker and his horse, Candy Spots, so Daddy was at a race called the Preakness. Mom was taking care of Sami, who kept screaming that at age eleven-almost-twelve she was too old for chicken pox.

  Would Daddy be here if Sami sang? Sure he would. Sami was his favorite. Daddy called Delly Smarty-Pants, but he’d nicknamed Sami Princess Pretty.

  Sami’s jockey costume didn’t fit—too tight—so Delly wore a red plaid shirt over jeans. Blackface hid her flushed cheeks and made her feel like a real actress.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Mary Sue limp toward the piano. Mary Sue had once caught polio. She wore a leg brace and refused to sing with the chorus because, she said, everybody would stare at her leg. Sami said she wouldn’t sing if Mary Sue played the piano but when Sami got sick, Teacher put Mary Sue back in the show. Delly didn’t care. Poor crippled girl.

  Clutching her guitar pick with sweaty fingers, Delly took a deep breath, then nodded at Mary Sue. “De Camptown ladies sing dis song, doodah . . .”

  Something’s wrong, she thought. Oh, no. Teacher forgot to tune my guitar with the piano.

  Mary Sue had already finished the intro. Hair wild, eyes feral, her fingers raced up and down the black-and-white keys. Delly tried to catch up. “I bet my money on de boomtail . . . I mean bobtail . . . slow down, Mary Sue!”

  There was a gasp from the audience as Mary Sue burst into tears and limped away. At the same time, Samantha’s face appeared, peeking ’round the side curtain. She pranced center stage, her chicken pox scars covered by makeup, her body clothed in silky pants and shirt, her hair hidden by a jockey’s cap.

  Jockey’s cap? Delly focused on the audience. Daddy stood in back of the auditorium. Mom, too.

  “What are you doing here?” Delly whispered.

  “Candy Spots won the race and Daddy came home and I felt better, thank goodness. You almost ruined everything.”

  “You’re too late.”

  “That’s what you think, Smarty-Pants.” Sami winked toward the first row. “My name’s Samantha Gold,” she announced in a loud voice, “and I’m Delilah Gold’s twin sister.”

  The audience laughed because the Gold twins didn’t look anything alike, except for their dark makeup.

  “No, really.” Sami grinned. “Delilah’s the smart one. She gets all the good report cards. I’m the singer in the family, but I caught the stupid chicken pox so I told Delilah the show must go on. Then I figured I was chickening out . . .” She paused for another wave of laughter. “So here I am.”

  During the applause that followed, Samantha hissed, “Sing my doodahs, Delly-Dog.”

  The audience hushed.

  “De Camptown ladies sing dis song . . .”

  “Doodah, doodah,” Delly warbled tremulously.

  “De Camptown race track five miles long . . .”

  “Oh, doodah-day.”

  “I come down dah wid my hat caved in . . .”

  Grasping the brim, Samantha removed her cap and curls tumbled down past her shoulders. Delly saw Mike Bleich lean forward. His mouth was open and he looked as if he wanted to eat Sami for dessert.

  “Your turn,” Samantha whispered. “What’s the matter?”

  “Doodah,” Delly said. Then she shouted, “Doodah!”

  Samantha’s eyes blazed. Walking to the very edge of the stage, she smiled at the audience, her audience and sang the next line.

  “Oh, doodah-day,” they responded and began to clap.

  The sound hurt Delly’s ears. She wished she could limp away like Sarah, but her tush seemed stuck to her chair. Tears filled her eyes and trickled down her black face, leaving a trail of streaks. She felt hot and feverish. Gee whiz, she’d probably caught Sami’s stupid chicken pox.

  Later, Daddy said, “I can’t tell the difference between your spots and freckles, Smarty-Pants.” Focusing his camera, he snapped her picture three times.

  “Don’t,” she said. “I look like an ugly duckling. Please, Daddy, shoot Sami.”

  After Daddy closed the door behind him, Delly balanced a pad of lined paper against her drawn-up knees. Her school’s Weekly Reader printed the names and addresses of kids who wanted to be pen pals. Delly had waved her pencil over the newspaper, shut her eyes, then thrust. The pencil’s sharp point had landed on a Milwaukee girl, Anissa Stern.

  Dear Anissa, Delly scribbled. Today I played the guitar and sang Camptown Races. Everyone clapped and Mike Bleich said I looked good enough to eat.

  * * * * *

  Delly had memorized the soundtrack from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Today she sang “Summertime”—a song about easy living and fish jumping and cotton growing high.

  She paused, thinking how bizarre she sounded. Because cotton didn’t grow between the cracks of a paved cul-de-sac and the only aquatic jumper around was Samantha’s goldfish, Scarlett O’Hara th
e Fifth. Scarlett the First, Second, Third and Fourth had been flushed down the toilet, and Delly suspected that Scarlett Five had already written her estate disposition, which consisted of one miniature Neptune statue, one strand of fake seaweed and one algae-infested bowl.

  Summertime . . . August 1, 1966 . . . and the living was lazy. Standing by an open window, Delly watched a Good Humor truck cruise her street. Suddenly, a telephone echoed the truck’s ding-a-ling summons.

  Samantha heard the phone ring, but ignored it. If the caller was a boy, Delly would shout Sa-man-tha, their special code. If it wasn’t a boy, who gave a rat’s spit? She preferred to daydream about the Hollywood home she would someday occupy. A heart-shaped swimming pool and maid’s quarters and a special room for screening the latest Paul Newman movies.

  Her parents’ white-shingled, two-story house was okay. Nestled behind clipped bushes, it faced a lawn anchored at both corners by weeping willows. But there was no—what was Delly-Dog’s favorite word?—oh, yeah, ambiance.

  Samantha Vivian Gold had ambiance. Didn’t her new dress prove it? Mom would freak. Carolyn Ann, not Mom. When a girl became a woman, even went through her stupid bas mitzvah, for Christ’s sake, she shouldn’t have to call her mother Mom. Where was Carolyn Ann? Still in the back yard?

  “Delly,” Samantha yelled. “Carolyn Ann. Answer the phone!”

  Carolyn Ann Gold didn’t hear the phone. Wearing jeans and her husband William’s Chicago White Sox T-shirt, she stood in front of a barbecue grill at the end of a long cobblestone driveway. Clouds drifted overhead. One looked like a sheep. As she watched, it dissipated into a prone woman. No. A woman lying on her back wouldn’t have rounded breasts. In a prone position, breasts flattened, unless William played brassiere with his hands.

  Her whimsical meditation was interrupted by an alto yowl that sounded like gargled mouthwash, and she shifted her gaze toward a three-legged cat.

  Southern Comfort, the family’s Siamese, was a pain in the tush. Samantha adored the crippled cat while Delly teased him, a distinct personality reversal. When had Delly begun to poke fun at Comfort? Three years ago, following the Stephen Foster recital. But why? Never mind. It was too hot for psychoanalysis.

  Carolyn Ann inhaled nature’s perfume, thankful that the aroma of sizzling beef juice was disguised by the scent of overripe grapes. I should put up grape jelly, she thought, shading her eyes from the sun, admiring her purple arbor and the myriad of colors that flashed from her flower beds. Pink, red and white roses climbed toward the clouds, then tripped over the top slats of a wooden fence. Squeezing her eyes shut, Carolyn Ann pictured her husband pruning the roses and heard her mother’s indignant screams: “It’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor man. Samuel Curtis will inherit his father’s real estate and brokerage firms.”

  “I love Samuel, Mom, but I’m in love with William.”

  “What about your career?”

  “So I won’t be a concert pianist. William and I make beautiful music together.”

  “Oh, my God! Are you pregnant?”

  “Not yet.”

  Carolyn Ann’s father, an insurance salesman, had given his only daughter term-life policies for every anniversary, all fifteen of them, despite Mom’s objections. Mom was unforgiving, stubborn as a mule . . .

  “You’re an ungrateful brat,” her mom had said in 1951, after Carolyn Ann eloped. At the time, William Goldstein was a young struggling “shutterbug.” They enjoyed blissful poverty until 1956, when William was invited to photograph a Brooklyn cousin’s wedding. Afterward, he attended a baseball game between the Yankees and the Dodgers. Aiming his camera toward Don Larson, who had just pitched the first perfect game in the history of the World Series, William sold the result to a sports magazine. The magazine chopped the “stein” off his name. Photo by W. Gold.

  A year later, “W. Gold” drove to Little Rock, Arkansas, where Federal troops were trying to enforce the Supreme Court’s school integration edict. His freelance photos accompanied front page headlines.

  In 1958 the Golds moved to New York. That same year, the New York Giants played the first overtime game in the history of a National Football League championship. They were beaten by the Baltimore Colts, but William’s photo of the two opposing quarterbacks, Johnny Unitas and Y.A. Tittle, became a poster that was sold in novelty shops. Although W. Gold wasn’t exactly a household name, his poster eventually graced thousands of walls and could be found in sports taverns throughout the United States.

  During 1961 he toured the deep South with busloads of freedom riders. He also produced a poster of Roger Maris after the baseball star had whacked his sixty-first home run.

  When Shoemaker rode Candy Spots to victory in the Preakness, ruining Chateaugay’s bid for a triple crown, W. Gold’s photo decorated the cover of Sports Illustrated.

  His camera captured James Meredith being admitted into Mississippi University, then recorded marches from Selma to Montgomery and the five-day Watts riot. He even did a layout for Playboy, a sports theme, and one lovely lady, shown with a horse nuzzling her bosom, went on to fame and fortune. That led to a slew of celebrity portraits. Carolyn Ann wasn’t jealous or anything, but she did tactfully suggest that William stay home and put together a book of sports personalities, perhaps even a volume of the Civil Rights movement.

  Three days ago her husband had received a call from the University of Texas. An alumnus offered W. Gold big bucks to photograph Longhorn football players. With a deep sigh of resignation, Carolyn Ann watched William pack a bag and catch the first available flight.

  Now Carolyn Ann opened her eyes and smiled fondly. Her husband hadn’t even kissed her good-bye, too busy munching a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Homemade jelly from their own grape vines.

  “I’ll bottle some more tomorrow. Oh, damn,” she swore, scooping up a hamburger patty with her spatula. Too late. Adding the meaty lump to the charcoal it resembled, she wished William would call and let her know what time he’d return. Samuel Curtis was in New York on business. William and Samuel had become close friends, despite the fact that Samuel admitted he still carried a torch for Carolyn Ann and had never married.

  She heard a loud belch and directed her gaze toward a redwood bench, attached to a picnic table.

  “I’ve never been so stuffed in my life,” said Samuel, unbuttoning the waistband of his slacks and drawing a deep breath. “Delly insisted I eat a hamburger with coleslaw, her favorite combination. Samantha practically force fed me two wieners. Then I had to taste the potato salad and—”

  “Deviled eggs.” Carolyn Ann returned his grin. She was short, barely five feet, but Samuel topped her by only four inches. His brown hair had cute David Niven crinkles. “Look down at your feet. No, closer to the table. When William poured the cement for our patio, before it dried, he printed a message.”

  “ ‘Eat at your own risk,’ ” Samuel quoted.

  “That was Delly’s idea. Samantha wanted ‘good-looking boys welcome.’ ”

  “Are you absolutely certain they’re twins?”

  “You were at the hospital with William when they arrived. The doctor insisted they were identical.”

  “Is he near-sighted or far-sighted?”

  “Both. I think he had a buxom nurse on his mind. In any case, when the egg split a few genes got mixed up. Here comes your favorite now.”

  “Hush. I don’t have a favorite. You’re still my best girl. When are you going to leave William and run away with me?”

  “Oh, in about fifty years.” With slender fingers, she brushed her dark hair back from her forehead. “Better yet, we’ll all perform a ménage a trois at the old folks’ retirement home.”

  “William will never retire.”

  “I know.” Carolyn Ann sighed then watched her daughter, Samuel’s namesake, dance down the cobblestones.

  Samantha had a voluptuous figure, stretched over five feet, four and a half inches. Her low-cut party dress barely covered her fully developed
breasts. Hazel eyes with golden glints were rimmed by black lashes and black liner. Her long blonde hair had often been compared to Trigger, Roy Rogers’ horse.

  “Look at my new dress, Uncle Sam,” she said. “Isn’t it divine?”

  “Where’s the rest? The bottom, for instance?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, skirts are getting shorter.”

  “So am I.” He stood, stretched, and attached his waistband buttons.

  “I think you’re the handsomest person in the whole world,” said Samantha, “except maybe Mike Bleich.”

  “Who’s Mike Bleich? A movie star?”

  “Mike is the young man escorting Samantha to the pool party tonight,” Carolyn Ann said. “It’s a sock-hop. Music from the early fifties. Remember our favorite song? Darn, it was on the tip of my tongue. Something by Jo Stafford.”

  “ ‘You Belong to Me.’ Stafford sang you belong to me and I asked you to marry me. You said sure-why-not and we became engaged. Then three weeks later—”

  “Samuel, please.” Carolyn Ann flushed beneath her tan. “Are you planning to wear that dress, Samantha?”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Thirteen-year-old girls shouldn’t wear black.”

  “I’m fourteen, Carolyn Ann.”

  “Don’t argue, Samantha, and stop with the Carolyn Ann already.”

  “Aw, Mom, it’s a present from Uncle Sam.”

  “Wait a minute. I plead innocent. I gave you the money for a new dress but I didn’t pick it out.”

  Hands on hips, Carolyn Ann said, “What are the other girls wearing?”

  “Junk from the fifties. Poodle skirts and stupid ponytails. I told all my friends about Uncle Sam’s present. Do you want me to sound like a liar? Daddy would say it’s okay.”

  “Daddy’s in Texas.”

  “Can I ask him when he calls?”

  “May I.”

  “May I, Mom? If he says okay, can . . . may I wear it?”

  “We’ll see,” she said. William would never say no to Princess Pretty so why continue the argument?