hardly even heard of what Frank Gumm was.
Pretty little lady with the pretty little hands, that's what Frank Gumm would call me when we were on stage together. I'd stand up and give a little smile; he'd take my hand; we'd bow. What a con artist. Both of us.
And everyone knew. Everyone in Grand Rapids, then everyone in Lancaster. I had to walk down the street and feel people's eyes on my face. What a world he pushed me into.
The pretty little lady cut her hair and became modern. The things I found myself doing because of Frank Gumm. I nearly didn't have Frances. I can remember driving to see Marcus, Marcus our friend, our doctor. It was like being in a dream, my husband driving the car beside me, looking like such a man, being so gallant and soft- spoken. I couldn't put it together. It didn't make sense. A husband and wife driving off like dirty strangers to kill their child, as if they were two kids who had been caught
Sitting in Marcus's office. Trying to find a way to tell him, a way to begin to ask him. We both sat grinning and coughing. We didn't even know what to call it. An abortion.
Frank kept smiling. His whole life was a smiling lie. I was the one who had to say it in the end, I was the one who always had to do everything.
'What my husband means, Marcus, is that I am with child and we don't want it and we were wondering if there was some way in which we don't have to have it.'
Marcus paused and looked back and forth between our faces. Frank's fat, sweaty face all queasy and cheesy and I hated him then. It was all starting to come out in his face. He was becoming a weaselly little man.
Poor Marcus, what was he to say? 'Um. There are some ways, yes, but none of them anything I'd like to associate with you two. Do you mind telling me the reason?'
I still can't remember what we said. Two children is enough. Can't afford three. Can't afford the time. It must have sounded pretty feeble. How could I say, My husband is a sodomite and I can't bear him, the idea of where his hands have been or the thing that is growing inside me, that he put inside me. I wanted it gone.
Baby sensed that, somehow. She must have. She must have felt it inside me, no child couldn't. Maybe she half remembers that Mommy wanted to kill her.
But only because I thought she would kill me, inside. Me, Ethel Milne, wanting to do that to my own child. I'd been pushed into a nightmare. What my husband was. The lies we told. And that was only halfway through, halfway through our strange dance. Me and Frank.
We named her after both of us, Frances Ethel. She was supposed to hold us together, and she did. There was something special about Frances. But it all got too much for Grand Rapids. The women came to tea and asked me about Frank's friends. One of them even called them boyfriends, and my little girls could hear, and I wanted to die.
Running away somehow kept us together too. All the way across America, going West and working on the stage.
That drive across the whole darn country. That little town with the cockroaches. They had a one-hundred- seater in a town of five hundred. We knew then that vaudeville was dead.
And Frances's Spanish trousers all in a tangle, not able to get them on. Poor little thing all naked in the wings and Janie, Jinny, singing the chorus over and over, waiting for her to make her entrance. Frank fighting to get her dressed so she could go on. And Baby Frances just smiled, grinning. She knew it was happening and thought it was funny. Everything was held up for Frances. That was all she cared about even then, being in the center. That little impish grin.
Well, imps grow up to be demons. Ethel saw the impish face, transmogrified into something medieval, a monkeylike, vengeful face. Gargoyle. Judy Gargoyle.
So where is the goodness in my life? Where is the joy? Where has it all gone?
Don't think about it, Ethel. There's more to you than that. Things go wrong, but they can't touch what you are inside. They can't touch what you once were. Or where you were from. They can't touch home.
Ethel Milne Gumm Gilmore remembered her first life.
I used to play tennis in a long skirt that went all the way down to the ground. Mutton sleeves, tiny waist. You had to play so that you didn't sweat too much. You couldn't play to win; you didn't give it everything you had. You were supposed to break everything off. We'd play tennis, the girls of Superior, Minnesota, and we'd laugh. We'd all get together Sunday afternoons after church, around the piano, the whole crowd, boys and girls in a group chaperoning each other. A date like they have nowadays would have caused a scandal.
Chasteness seemed so sensible in those days. Foursquare. No nonsense. Everything dirty seemed a continent away. Real people got married and were happy and if there were problems they'd solve them. We had a girl who did the scrubbing, and an old fat woman who did the laundry, and some tough skinny old bird who polished the house. All we had to learn was how to be beautiful. Taste and refinement. You learned how to speak properly and sit up straight. There were knives and forks and flowers on the table and laughter in the front hall. You cooked special dishes for church socials.
And the clubs. I would be the president of one and the secretary of another. Superior Chapter of the Order of the Rainbow. Young Ladies' Music Society. What were we going to do? We were going to make a good world by setting an example. By living well, we lived for everyone.
There was such a thing as progress. You learned about it. People talked about it; they believed in it. We talked about science and morality as if the two were the same thing. Light bulbs, motion pictures, flying machines, all the products of rationality. And rationality was always clean, calm, sensible. Enlightened. We thought mutton sleeves and laughter were a sign of rationality. Progress meant men who shaved and didn't drink in secret. We thought there was no need for secrets and that most people didn't have them. We thought passion was something sweet and orderly, smiling fresh-scrubbed behind glasses. Poetry was progress. Learning Tennyson by heart and singing simple songs. I was ever so daring, working in a theater. Lizzie, I can still see Lizzie, going all red. 'Ethel!' she said. Brave, she thought, singing in public and risking approbation.
'I see nothing wrong in singing harmless songs and bringing harmless pleasure,' I said. I felt ever so modern with white cotton up to my chin and my wrists and ankles hidden well away and a little watch hanging from my waist.
'You'll be smoking a pipe next,' Lizzie said. Flushed face, bright spectacles.
