American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee by Karen Abbott Read Free Book Online Page B

her talent more slapstick than refined. In her view, Louise didn’t lack ability so much as interest. “She was haughty,” June said, “and not sure she wanted to be there because she didn’t
have
to be there.”
    To Louise, June was born for the sole purpose of gracing a stage, as if those oddly tired eyes and miraculous little feet had been specially ordered by Dionysus; even the barrel curlers their mother wound in her hair every night couldn’t diminish the effect. “Only actresses,” Louise thought, not without jealousy, “could be so pretty.” But she resented the Baby’s talent most of all. Of course Louise
tried
to make her steps light and quick and her voice carry without cracking, but her body refused to obey her brain. “I wanted desperately to sing and dance as well as June,” she insisted, “but she learned everything so fast.… I couldn’t help looking at myself and I hated the person I saw.”
    The one thing the sisters came to agree on, after years of being entrapped by her words and mauled by her will, was their mother, a woman whose every thought and action defied her last, who raised her daughters as if they were two grizzled generals preparing for war—with men, with her, with each other. From year to year, month to month, even moment to moment, neither Louise nor June nor Rose knew the true status of their relationship: the tornado of slights (real or imagined), remorse (genuine or feigned), and resentment (always authentic, always deep) scythed too fiercely through their paths.
    Rose was forthright in her dishonesty. “Never lie, never steal,” she’d advise, “it does no good in the long run,” but she did both every day they spent on the road. A self-professed prude, she invoked God often and disdained makeup (for herself; the Lord understood the girls needed rouge onstage), nail polish, and silk stockings, yet ventured this opinion about marriage: “If you don’t succeed the first time, try, try again, only don’t try to squeeze oil out of a rock.” Her petite hands, with their fragile, baby-bird bones, were capable, literally, of murder. She was by turns tender and pathetic and terrifying, broken in a way that no one, in that time or place, had any idea how to fix. “Mother was,” June thought, “a beautiful little ornament that was damaged.” Her broken edges cut her daughters in ways both emotional and physical, and only sharpened with age.
    Louise recalled many injuries from these days, long before Rose’s unyielding focus turned from June to her, long before the Minsky brothers stepped in and rearranged her world, long before she trained her mind to ignore messages from her body. At first Rose tried desperately to fit her into the act. “I know that Louise is destined to be a great, great something or other,” she insisted to Big Lady and Belle. “My children are rare.” She bought Louise a saxophone she couldn’t play and spoiled her with presents, such as a Helena Rubenstein makeup box, to make her forget how jealous she was of June. But Louise knew she was a liability most of the time; her mother made that clear when she called her “excess baggage” and sighed in her direction, asking,“What
is
the matter with you, Louise? Is it that you don’t want to do the dance? Is that it? What
do
you want?”
    What Rose wanted, at least part of the time, was for Louise to go away, although she worried about strange influences warping her elder daughter. “When she’s away from us,” Rose fretted, “she’s in a nest of civilians. Oh God, please don’t let it rub off on her.” But on several occasions she made it happen, allowing the girls’ father, Daddy Jack Hovick, a rare visit (despite her fury at his remarrying), or taking her to live withAunt Hilma, Daddy Jack’s sister in Seattle. Aunt Hilma was married to an advertising executive for the
Seattle Times
, and they owned a grand white house on Queen Anne Hill.
    Their daughter, Helen, died at age