She huddled with four of her fellow actors around one microphone, script in hand. Each episode brought to life a historical event, with the emphasis on inspiration and uplift. This evening’s reenacted how the death of a tubercular cow led to the pasteurization of milk and saved millions of lives. Not a topic Hazel had ever imagined being dramatized, but why not?
The ON AIR sign lit up and the announcer launched into the DuPont slogan, “Better Things for Better Living through Chemistry,” before offering up an introduction to this week’s episode.
The actors straightened, at the ready.
The director nodded and the first section of dialogue between the cow’s owner and a veterinarian began, the actor Melvyn Douglas speaking with a clipped authority as the owner.
The director raised his eyebrows at Hazel, lifted his finger, and right on cue Hazel moved closer into the mic and took a deep breath.
“Moo.”
She mooed like a cow a few times more, before joining the others with general barnyard noises.
The director nodded his approval.
The highlight of her week. Acting like a cow.
When she’d first come home from the war, her mother had welcomed her back, eager to hear about her travels abroad. But once Hazel had run through all the stories she could muster, they fell into old habits. Her mother had made lists of theater producers Hazel ought to see, shows she should audition for, just as she’d done with Hazel’s father and brother, when the last thing Hazel wanted to do was put on makeup and high heels and beg for an audition. The work seemed trivial, after what she’d done in Naples. After what she’d seen. She’d eventually been offered the job at the radio show, although the work was intermittent at best, and far from challenging.
The past few years, she’d continued to work on the play she’d started in Italy after learning of Paul’s brutal murder. The main characters—a young Italian man hiding a German who’d turned against his homeland, and the German himself—had haunted her nightmares since the events in the plaza in Naples, and she’d put it down on the page in the hopes she could tame the violent memories that spooled in her head. Still, something was wrong with it, but she was too nervous to show it to anyone else and get advice. The setting—an Italian village in the countryside—limited her enormously. What did she really know about small-town Calabria? Not much beyond the scenery. She kept at it, though, trying to make it come to life.
After the radio program wrapped, everyone clapping one another on the back and offering congratulations as if they’d won the World Series, Hazel grabbed her coat and handbag and headed for the door. In spite of the odd subject matter, she’d been inspired by some of the dialogue, and couldn’t wait to get home to tweak her own work accordingly.
She never played anything grander than a voice in the crowd, but with each broadcast, she learned something new about structure or timing. Hazel absorbed these lessons as if she were an apprentice instead of an extra, lingering behind the director as he gave notes to the leads or brainstormed with the writer to come up with a better ending.
She stepped outside into the warm spring evening. The streetlamps threw down shimmering ribbons of gold on the wet pavement and sidewalks. The walk uptown, even at this late hour, was safe and quiet.
At home, Ruth sat alone, hunched over, nursing a cold tea and a grudge at their linoleum table. Without Ben to divert their mother’s attention, Hazel received the full onslaught of pressure to perform. She’d considered finding her own place, even walked by the Chelsea Hotel a number of times and gazed up at the balconies, wondering which room Maxine had stayed in.
They’d exchanged letters for a while after the war, Maxine’s full of Hollywood gossip, Hazel with updates on the theater scene and her attempts at both acting and playwriting, but after a while, Hazel found it easier to stop replying than admit how dull her life had become. Meanwhile, she’d read all about Maxine’s exploits in Hollywood in the magazines, how she’d landed several decent parts in movies, been photographed in front of palm trees and on breezy beaches.
The Chelsea Hotel felt like a link to the Maxine she’d known in Naples, the girl who’d suffered with her at Paul’s death, who’d shared the horror and, at times, the strange joy of war. On top of that, the place tantalized her with creative promise, with the knowledge that so many actors and writers had stayed there and found inspiration. But Hazel couldn’t leave her mother, not after Ben had left and never come back.
Hazel hung her coat on the hook and took off her gloves. “Did you listen tonight, Ma? What did you think?” Hazel added an extra dose of enthusiasm to her voice, hoping that might change the course of the conversation.
“It was fine.” Ruth took a loud sip of tea. “I have no idea which one you were.”
No way was Hazel going to volunteer that she’d voiced a bovine.
“I made a list of casting calls for you for next week.” Ruth pointed to a notebook on the table. “First one is Monday at ten, for a revival of some Thornton Wilder one-act. Make sure you wear something pretty, put on some makeup. We’ve got to land you a theater job soon, or you’ll be out of the running completely.”
“That’s the wrong way to look at it. Radio and television are all the rage these days. There’s a ton of new opportunities.”
“I don’t know about that. The stage was good enough for your brother. By now he would have been starring on Broadway. Don’t forget, I know how this is done. After all, I built your father’s career. Without me, he’d never have hit the big time.”
No one could forget that fact, as Ruth brought it up every chance she got: that she had been his assistant at first before gradually taking over every aspect of decision-making—from choosing the color of his shirt to the part in his hair—and turning him into a major name. His helplessness later in life sealed her role as compassionate caretaker. Every neighbor who stopped by for coffee knew to praise Ruth for her self-sacrifice if they wanted an extra slice of cake.
Whenever Ruth got prickly, Hazel reminded herself that her mother lashed out only because she was terrified of losing another child the way she had lost Ben. Hazel had already disrupted her mother’s life once by impulsively auditioning for the USO tour, and Ruth would brook no more foolishness.
One evening, though, Hazel had seen a different side of Ruth, when she’d awoken to a strange sound and watched silently from the darkness of the hallway as her mother sobbed into her father’s lap. She was half kneeling on the cold tile floor, clutching his knees and weeping into his skinny thighs as he patted her head with his good hand, as one would an old dog. Her father lifted his eyes and met Hazel’s gaze. Even though he hadn’t said a word since the stroke, she knew exactly what that look meant. Do not enter, do not catch her in her grief. Go back to bed and leave her to me.
Hazel tried again. “The good thing about being on the radio is that no one knows how old you are, which opens up a lot of great parts.”
“Voices age just like faces. Don’t fool yourself.”
“Well, sure, eventually they do. But I’m only thirty.”
“You think thirty’s young?”
“Not young, no. But I don’t mind aging into leading lady territory. Much better than being a ditzy ingenue.” Hazel winked, trying to force Ruth into more lighthearted territory. If she could steer her mother into a laugh just as her rant gathered steam, the tension between them might fizzle. Hazel had used this method of circumventing Ruth’s tirades for years, but lately it hadn’t been working very well.
“What do you know about it?” Ruth scowled. “You’ve never played an ingenue.”
Hazel sighed. There would be no avoiding any tension tonight. “Mom, enough. I may not want to work onstage anymore. I may not even want to act.”