The doorman smiled at them and led them inside to a small desk. He picked up a phone and as he was dialing it he said to Min, “May I have your name, please?”
“Mindy Read,” she replied. “I’m Allie’s mother.”
The doorman spoke into the phone, then hung it up and said, “Go on up. The elevator’s over there on the right.”
“Oh, Min, this is so exciting!” said Flora in a hushed voice as they stepped into the elevator. “Everything is so exciting. Imagine us in a New York City apartment building. I feel like I’m in a movie.”
The elevator rose to the third floor, and when the door opened, Allie was waiting for them. “I can’t believe you’re here!” she said, and then burst into tears and clung to Min. “Sorry,” she said a few moments later. “Sorry. I’m so … emotional. You’d think I was the one who just gave birth.”
“What’s the news?” asked Min as Allie led them down a hallway. “Anything since last night?”
Allie shook her head. “No. And I don’t think I’ll get to see the baby for a while. Probably not until she’s ready to come home with me. Even then I won’t meet the birth parents. Everything will be handled through lawyers. But as far as I know, nothing has changed, and Janie and her mom are doing as well as the doctors could hope.” Allie opened a door marked 3E. “Here we are,” she said.
Flora stepped into a foyer with four doorways leading to other rooms, and a small hall leading to more rooms in the back. “This is big!” she exclaimed. “I thought an apartment would be small.” She poked her head into a kitchen, a living room, a dining room, an office, and two bedrooms. “Wow!” she said. “Wow!”
“I could live here,” said Ruby, setting down her suitcase.
“Hey, look out this window,” said Flora. “You can see right into those apartments across the street. Boy, you don’t really have much privacy in an apartment.”
“Well, who cares?” replied Ruby. “It’s New York, hello. Hey, Aunt Allie, do you think any movie stars live in those apartments? Just think, Flora, we could be looking right into Julie Andrews’s apartment. Or Meryl Streep’s. Ooh, ooh! Or George Clooney’s! Wouldn’t that be cool?”
“Somehow I think their apartments are fancier than the ones you’re looking into,” said Aunt Allie. “Here, let me show you where you’re going to sleep. You can unpack a bit, and then we’ll go out for lunch. How would you like to eat in a French bistro?”
“Ohhhh,” breathed Flora. “A French bistro.”
“Just like on I Love Lucy when Lucy orders the snails,” said Ruby. “Hey! Now’s my chance to try snails.”
“You’re really going to order snails?” asked Flora incredulously.
“Yup,” said Ruby. “I’m definitely going to think about possibly ordering snails.”
Flora decided the bistro was the most exotic place she had ever been in, even though the waiters and waitresses didn’t speak French, as she had hoped they would. Still, she and Ruby and Min and Aunt Allie were shown to a small round table with fancy little chairs and given menus featuring dishes with names like croque monsieur and steak au poivre.
“Look, Ruby,” said Aunt Allie. “Here are your snails. See where it says escargots?”
Ruby turned slightly pale. “So they really are on the menu,” she murmured. “Well,” she said after a few moments, “if I ordered them, would you all try one?”
“No way,” said Flora.
“No, thank you,” said Min.
“You’re on your own,” said Allie.
Ruby continued to study the menu. “Do you think they have grilled cheese sandwiches?” she finally asked. Flora snorted. “Well, what are you going to have?” Ruby wanted to know.
“A hamburger and French fries. At least the fries are French.”
After lunch, Aunt Allie, Min, Flora, and Ruby took the subway uptown. Flora was fascinated. “Riding in an underground train,” she marveled. “Just imagine what’s above us. Buses, stores, apartment buildings, skyscrapers…. How come the subway tunnels don’t collapse under those tons and tons of weight?”
“Let’s not think about that,” said Min faintly.
When they stepped out of the subway, Allie said, “What shall we do first? Go to Central Park? Walk down Fifth Avenue?”
“Fifth Avenue,” said Flora.
“Central Park,” said Ruby.
Allie tossed a coin in the air and Ruby won. They strolled through Central Park and Flora couldn’t believe they were right in the middle of a huge city. “It feels almost like the country here,” she said.
“Except for those people on bicycles and skateboards and scooters. And that woman over there drumming. And those guys break-dancing,” said Ruby.
“Well, you know what I mean,” said Flora. “I can barely see any buildings from here.”
They turned around and walked back to Fifth Avenue. They poked their heads into jewelry stores. In one, Flora saw a diamond-and-emerald necklace priced at $27,000. “Ruby!” she exclaimed in a whisper. “Look at this! At first I thought it cost twenty-seven dollars, and then I realized it’s twenty-seven thousand dollars. Who spends that much money on a necklace?”
Ruby sucked in her breath. “A billionaire, I guess. But I’ll bet no one will buy it. I’ll bet if we came back in five years, it would still be here.”
“Aunt Allie?” said Flora as they left the jewelry store. “Is there any place where I can buy presents for my friends? I mean, presents I can afford? I want to get souvenirs and Christmas presents.”
“Me, too,” said Ruby.
They walked until they found a gift shop with T-shirts and baseball caps and mugs and posters in the window.
“Now we’re talking,” said Ruby.
Flora opened her purse and consulted a piece of paper that she had unfolded. On one side was a list of people she needed to buy gifts for. On the other side was her budget. “This could take a while,” she announced. “I’ll have to shop very, very carefully.” When they left the store, Flora had bought a Lion King T-shirt for Nikki and a mug featuring the Empire State Building for Olivia.
Ruby had bought nothing.
“I think we’re all flagging,” commented Min.
“Maybe dinner will revive us,” said Allie.
“Dinner?” said Flora and Ruby.
“How about Chinese?” asked Allie. “I know the perfect place.”
As soon as they were seated in the Chinese restaurant, Flora decided that this was the most exotic spot she had ever been in. The walls were red and gold. A statue of Buddha was peeking over Min’s shoulder. The table was set with forks and knives and chopsticks.
“Bird’s nest soup,” said Ruby, studying the menu. “Is that really made from … twigs and dog fur?”
“Here’s egg drop soup,” said Flora. “You know, they could combine the soups into one dish. Put the eggs in the nests.”
Ruby giggled. “Instead of dropping them.”
Min said, “I think you girls are getting punchy.”
Flora thought that maybe she was a little punchy. But she didn’t care. This had been one of the best days of her entire life.
Ruby might not have tried the snails. And she passed up a great number of things on the menu in the Chinese restaurant on Friday night, finally settling for chicken with cashews, picking all the cashews out and setting them daintily aside on her plate. (The cashews had been cooked and were soft and vaguely slimy.) But on Saturday, she tried something that she couldn’t wait to tell her friends in Camden Falls about (her friends no longer including Lacey).
Ruby ate a chestnut.
She didn’t want to. Not after Aunt Allie told her the source of the wonderful smell that had reached her nose as she and Min and Allie and Flora once again walked along Fifth Avenue. “What is that?” Ruby asked, breathing in deeply. The air was cold and Ruby was cold and she could see her breath puffing out in front of her as they made their way toward a store called Lord & Taylor that Allie claimed had the best Christmas windows in
the city. “I smell … is it popcorn?” It didn’t smell quite like popcorn, but it did smell awfully good. More important, it smelled like it might be warm.
“You smell chestnuts,” replied Allie. “Hot chestnuts.”
“Gross!” cried Ruby.
“No, really. They’re awfully good. In fact, they’re a New York treat. You have to get roasted chestnuts on a winter day in New York City. Come on. Let’s find the cart. It’s got to be nearby.”
“There it is,” said Min.
“I am not eating chestnuts,” said Ruby flatly.
“I’ll try one,” said Flora.
“Show-off,” said Ruby.
They approached a two-wheeled cart with smoke rising from the top and disappearing into the frigid air. A man wearing a dusty sweatshirt, a faded wool cap, and the strangest gloves Ruby had ever seen was shoveling hot brown nuts into little bags.
“What happened to his gloves?” Ruby whispered to Min.
“Hush,” replied Min. “Nothing. They’re fingerless. They keep his hands warm, but he can make change without taking them off.”
“Huh. Clever,” said Ruby.
Aunt Allie now held out a bag of the chestnuts and Ruby eyed them suspiciously. “They’re big,” she said.
“You have to peel the shell off,” Min told her. “The nut is inside, all hot and toasty.”
Flora tentatively reached into the bag and withdrew a nut. Ruby watched her. The shell came off easily, and Flora held the nut, wrinkled and yellowish, in the palm of her hand. “Hmm,” she said. Then she glanced at Ruby and popped the entire thing in her mouth. She chewed carefully. “Hey, it’s good!” she exclaimed. “It’s sort of nutty and popcorny at the same time. Try one, Ruby. Go ahead.”
Against her better judgment, Ruby reached into the bag and withdrew a chestnut. She peeled the smooth shell away. “If they wanted people to eat these things,” she said, “they should have made them look better.”
“Just try it,” said Flora.
So Ruby did. “It is good!” she said. “Gosh. I should have tried snails after all.”
“Maybe they’ll be on the menu tonight,” said Flora.
“Oh. Yeah,” said Ruby, who had forgotten that she would be eating in another restaurant before going to the theatre that night.
When the chestnuts were gone, Ruby and her family made their way to Lord & Taylor, and Ruby saw why her aunt liked their windows.
“These are the best ever!” she exclaimed. “Just like you said, Aunt Allie.”
“They’re certainly putting me in the Christmas spirit,” added Min.
“Just think,” said Allie, gazing at Santa Claus and his reindeer-drawn sleigh soaring through a starlit sky, a teeny earth far below, “this Christmas, Janie will be with us.”
“Her first Christmas,” said Min.
Ruby said nothing. She glanced at her sister, who was also silent, and knew Flora was thinking what Ruby couldn’t bring herself to say: that Janie might be in Camden Falls for Christmas. Or she might be at home with her birth parents.
They edged past the rest of the windows, pointing and exclaiming and marveling at all the wonderful, fanciful details — an elf’s lighted buttons, miniature popcorn strung on an equally miniature tree in a dollhouse, a mechanical cat swatting at a toy mouse. When at last they had inched their way out of the line, they crossed a side street and Allie said, “We’d better go back to the apartment now. We need time to get ready for tonight.”
“Yes!” cried Ruby. “Time for Broadway.”
Even though Aunt Allie had said that no one got dressed up to go to the theatre anymore, Min had insisted that every one of them put on their very best clothes. “We will not,” she said, “attend the theatre looking like a bunch of hobos.”
When they left the apartment that evening, Flora and Ruby were wearing velvet dresses, Min was wearing her best going-out-to-dinner suit, complete with a gold necklace that Ruby had never seen before, and Allie was wearing a brocade vest and a pair of black silk pants. Min frowned slightly at the pants, fancy as they were, but said nothing. “A good thing, too,” Allie whispered to Ruby. “I didn’t pack a dress.”
They took a cab back to Midtown.
“Where are we going to have dinner?” asked Ruby as the city sped by outside the windows.
“At one of my favorite restaurants,” Allie replied. “Joe Allen. It’s near the theatres, and lots of people eat there before shows.”
“Famous people?” Ruby wanted to know.
“You might see a famous person or two,” Allie replied.
Ruby was excited into speechlessness.
The cab pulled up in front of what looked like a very small restaurant, but when Ruby stepped inside, she found that Joe Allen was larger than it appeared. Fascinated, she examined the walls, which were hung with posters of Broadway shows. Then she noted that over the bar was a television. A football game was playing, but Ruby said breathlessly, “Min, could we ask them to change the channel? I want to see if Everybody Loves Raymond is on.”
“No TV,” Min whispered back.
“Yeah. Let’s go see if there are snails on the menu,” said Flora.
There weren’t, to Ruby’s relief. And so she felt comfortable enough to say to the waitress, when it was time to give their orders, “I was hoping to try snails, but I guess tonight’s not the night.”
“Maybe they have a snail special,” said Flora, and Ruby’s eyes widened.
The waitress laughed. “You’re off the hook,” she told Ruby.
Ruby ate a hamburger. She told the waitress about life in Camden Falls. She asked to be alerted if anyone famous came into the restaurant. She examined the posters and imagined her name on all of them: Ruby, child actor. Ruby, tap-dancing queen of Broadway. Ruby, grande dame of stage and screen.
When Min looked at her watch and said that it was time to leave for the theatre, Ruby realized that she hadn’t thought of Ms. Angelo or the Children’s Chorus or her awful mistake in hours. She let out a sigh of contentment. New York was the place for her.
The theatre was everything Ruby could have hoped for. It was large. It was grand. The seats were red and plush. The curtain, ponderous and sweeping, was also red and was trimmed with gold braid.
“Pinch me,” Ruby whispered to Flora as they lowered themselves into their seats. “I’m either dreaming or I’m in heaven.”
Flora obligingly pinched her. “Neither,” she whispered back. “This is real.”
Ruby opened her Playbill and read about the actors she would see that night. She hadn’t heard of any of them, but that didn’t matter.
Ruby was on Broadway.
“Min?” she said. “Can we get popcorn?”
Min smiled. “This isn’t like a movie theatre, honey. No popcorn. But at intermission we’ll see if we can get a snack.”
Ruby blushed. She felt she should know such things. She buried her nose in the Playbill and was relieved when at last the lights dimmed. She reached for Flora’s hand and squeezed it. “The adventure begins,” she whispered.
The orchestra played the overture and Ruby, rapt, watched the conductor waving his baton. But when the curtain rose, Ruby was disappointed. She saw a stage that was bare except for a spotlight. Where was the fancy scenery? She had been hoping for a set loaded with props and backdrops and furniture. But in seconds she found that she didn’t care one bit about the set. She became lost in the world of the theatre. Ruby knew the music from Spotlight, but since she had never seen a production of the show she was hazy about the story. Now she learned that the play was about putting on a play: about actors and singers and dancers, and their stories and how they had reached this particular point in their lives — what drove them to become performers, and what putting on this play night after night meant to each of them.
Ruby could relate. This world, the world of show business, was hers. She applauded all the talented performers who were working so hard at what they truly loved.
Ruby was thoroug
hly enjoying herself. She was lost in the stories of the actors, and had already cried a little, when suddenly the story of one actor in particular, Eva, became clear to Ruby. Eva had once been a very famous actress who had won all sorts of awards, but now hardly anyone would hire her, so she had settled for a teensy little part, appearing only briefly as someone’s aunt, and wearing, Ruby noted, a very unflattering wig.
Ruby gulped. What had happened to Eva? How had she fallen from grace? Ruby had a sinking feeling that she knew the answers to those questions. She could hear Min’s voice as plain as day, telling Ruby that she had become a bit cocky. Was this what happened when people became cocky? Nobody wanted to work with them and their careers began to slip?
Ruby lost track of the story for a while. She pictured herself in her bedroom in the Row House, glancing at the music for the Thanksgiving performance … and setting it aside, deciding that she knew it already. She remembered her rash decision not to attend the rehearsal at the end of the first day the Doer of Unpleasant Jobs had been in business. Then she saw herself standing on the risers before half of Camden Falls, not knowing when to begin her solo. Well, at least she knew her solo, Ruby said to herself. She knew the music, she knew the words. But she had felt that she didn’t need to work with the rest of the chorus, and that had cost her dearly. Now she saw exactly where such an attitude could lead. One day Ruby might wind up as Eva, a washed-up former star, scrambling for lowly roles, settling for work of any kind, just to be able to pay her bills.
Ruby tried to focus on the stage and the performers again. She glued her eyes to Eva. She was not, she told herself firmly, going to become Eva one day. She would not take anything for granted. If she wanted to be a professional (again, she could hear Min’s words in her mind) then she would have to work hard. She had a strong suspicion that when Ms. Angelo said Ruby was on probation and could actually be asked to leave the chorus, she meant it.
In the cab on the way back to the apartment that night, Min said, “Ruby, you’re awfully quiet.”