TAXI GIRL
Chapter Six
The Saturday program ran for six weeks; at the fifth session, Tania asked the kids two questions.
“Would you like to invite your parents to watch you perform next Saturday? Does anybody not want to do that?”
There were no objections.
“Well then, we need a title for our show. Any ideas?”
Alex raised his hand.
“How about The Mummy Goes Around Scaring People Until I Take Him Back to Egypt on an Airplane?”
“Okaaay,” said Tania. “Any other suggestions?”
James De Minure raised his hand.
“The Lost Mummy.”
Mandy raised her hand.
“I like that because the story’s about a mummy, and he’s lost.”
Everyone, including Alex, agreed. Billy Miller narrated the performance, and Tania directed the kids. After the show, all the parents expressed interest in another six-week session.
Tania and Billy Miller left the theater and stopped in front of Hensler’s Market on Sedgwick.
“Ever had blood sausage?” asked Billy.
“Practically every Sunday after church,” said Tania. “Are you German?”
“Yes, but you aren’t supposed to know it; that’s why my father changed our name from Müller to Miller back in the thirties.”
They entered the market.
Tania whispered, “Don’t tell anyone, but my father was deported back to Argentina for being a Nazi, and my last name’s not really Wildman.”
“I’d like to hear more about that.”
The couple bought blood sausage, eggs, a bottle of Riesling and eucalyptus bath salts. Then they climbed the stairs to Billy’s apartment.
“How shall we cook the eggs?” asked Tania. “We used to have them scrambled.”
“Us too. You make the eggs; I’ll cook the sausage, and we’ll drink the wine.”
After lunch, they made love. Then Tania poured the eucalyptus bath salts into Billy’s tub, and the two of them got in while it was filling.
“So, your father was a Nazi,” said Billy.
“No, he was accused of being a Nazi.”
“Go on.”
“He worked for an export company, typing letters from Spanish to English. Mister Wyman, the president of the company, promoted him.”
Tania shifted her position in the tub.
“Are you feeling what I’m feeling?” she asked.
“I don’t know; what are you feeling?” asked Billy.
“My asshole’s on fire, and my vagina’s about to be. How’s your anus?”
“. . . not quite on fire but close,” said Billy.
“It’s from sitting on the eucalyptus.”
They got up, unplugged the drain and turned on the shower. Their butts faced each other under the spray.
“Ah, that’s much better,” said Tania.
“Finish your story,” said Billy.
“That piece of shit Marshall—”
“Was Marshall his first name or his last?”
“I don’t know; he was always referred to as ‘that piece of shit Marshall.’”
They turned toward each other.
“That piece of shit Marshall told the State Department my father took his job. He said Daddy wasn’t a real American, and besides that, he was a Nazi. They deported my father back to Argentina; my mother and sister went with him. They lived in Buenos Aires, and he traveled around South America selling sausage casings.”
“What happened next?”
“Mister Wyman went to Washington and told the State Department my father was ‘a good boy,’ so they un-deported him.”
Tania and Billy got out of the shower and toweled off.
“That’s some story,” said Billy.
“Do you have parents?” asked Tania.
“Yeah, my father’s a mechanic, and my mother runs a Philly steak drive-in.”
Billy and Tania lay naked on his unmade bed. They smoked a joint.
“My mother grew up on a farm in Wisconsin. She moved to Minneapolis with her sister Nell and met my father at the Marigold Ballroom. She gave him the wrong phone number because she didn’t want to get mixed up with a foreigner,” said Tania. She took a hit, angled her head in Billy’s direction and passed him the joint.
“Her hometown still refers to her as ‘that girl who married the man from Argentina.’”
“Tell me more,” said Billy.
Tania lay on her back and looked up at the ceiling.
“In October of ’68, I lived at home and worked at a local TV station, where I wrote fifteen-second copy like ‘Miss Jenny shows young viewers how to make a floppy-eared rabbit out of a handkerchief, next on WTCT-TV, Channel 7, Minneapolis.’ When my mother and father went on vacation in Hawaii, I took off for California to be with a guy I met in Chicago at the Festival of Life during the Democratic Convention. I called my parents from a pay phone after they got home. When I told Daddy I was living with Joey in a milk truck on the Navarro River, he said, ‘What is this guy, some kind of gigolo?’ I hung up the phone and didn’t talk to my father for months.”
“What about your mother?” Billy passed the joint to Tania. She took a drag, held it in and blew the smoke up in the air.
“I called her occasionally . . . during the day. She’d cry.” Tania passed the joint to Billy.
“So, what happened?”
“I started getting stomachaches. I went to a community health center in Mendocino, and the M.D. referred me to a shrink.”
“And?” Billy passed the joint to Tania.
“After a few sessions, I sent my father a birthday card.”
“And?”
“He wrote back. Do you wanna hear what he said?”
“You have the letter with you?”
“No, I memorized it. It came to my post office box in an airmail envelope; he typed it on Wildman Export stationary.” She boosted herself up and sat cross-legged.
“My Dear Tania,
There is one thing in life, and that is be kind to people, and they will be kind to you.”
Tania pursed her lips, then pushed them forward.
“I am sorry if I disturb your thoughts in any way because you know me better than anybody else.”
Tania swallowed back tears.
“So cheer up and smile that I will never let down.”
Her voice cracked.
“Thank you for your nice card. I hope you will decide to visit with us. Do not worry about the ticket because I will take care of it. You do not realize how happy your card also made Mummy. WE ARE ALL TOGETHER IN THIS GAME. Chau. Best to Joey and to you.
My very best of love,
Daddy.”
Tears spilled down Tania’s cheeks; no one spoke.
Billy and Tania put on underwear and went into the kitchen. They finished off the wine and the blood sausage.
“The board’s doing a thousand-dollar-a-plate fundraiser,” said Billy. “It’s not my show; it’s their show. I’m just providing the entertainment. I’m doing a version of Chekhov’s The Bear set in 1920s Lake Geneva. It’s a one-act comedy. I want you to audition for it.”
“Are you shittin’ me?”
“No, I’m not shitting you,” said Billy. “It’s a three-character play. There’s the widow, the landowner and the servant.”
“You want me to audition for the part of the servant?”
“No, the widow.”
Tania froze for a moment, then recovered.
“Do you have the play here?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it? I wanna read it,” said Tania. “How many copies do you have?”
“One.”
“Can I borrow it until tomorrow?”
“Sure, I’ll get it.”
Tania ran to the bedroom. She put on shoes but no socks and pants but no shirt. She came into the living room, got on her coat and stuffed the rest of her clothes in her pockets.
Billy handed her the play; Tania flew out the door. She stopped and turned to him.
“Thanks.”
Tania raced up the stairs of her apartment building to the second floor. She opened her front door, sat down in her only upholstered chair and started reading. Forty-five minutes later, she ran out of her apartment.
Tania entered the vestibule of Billy Miller’s building and rang his doorbell.
“It’s Tania; can I come up?”
He buzzed her in and stood in the entrance to his apartment. She came up the stairs to the landing.
“I wanna be in it. I can get the play at a library tomorrow. Oh shit, tomorrow’s Sunday; the libraries are closed. I’ll try bookstores; it might be in a collection. When are the auditions? Are you gonna assign the sides, or do we pick them? Wait, when did you say the audition was?”
“Let me make this easy for you, Tania.”
He took the play from her and leafed through it. He spread open the book, sat down at a Remington upright, inserted a piece of paper and began typing. Tania paced back and forth. Then she picked at her fingernails. Billy pulled the page out of the typewriter and handed it to her.
“Memorize this and show up for the audition on Tuesday at seven o’clock.”
“A.m. or p.m.?”
“Which do you think?”
Tania spent all of Sunday going over her lines.
“Then who, according to you, is faithful in love? Shit, that’s not it.” She checked the script and repeated aloud, “Then, according to you, who is faithful and constant in love? Is it the man? . . .Then, according to you, who is faithful in love? Is it the man? . . . Then, according to you, who is faithful and constant in love? Is it the man?”
She set down the sheet of paper.
“Then, according to you, who is faithful and constant in love? Is it the man?”
Then he says, “Yes, the man!” and I say . . . wait . . . I think I laugh. Do I say something before I laugh?
She scanned the script.
I say, “The man.” Next to that, it says, “Laughs bitterly.”
“The man!”
Tania threw back her head.
“Ha, ha, ha.”
Maybe that’s too much?
“The man!” She threw back her head.
“HA.”
I like that better. Okay, from the top.
“Then who, according to you, is faithful in love? FUCK. THAT’S NOT IT.”
By Monday, Tania had her lines memorized. At 10:30 a.m., she picked up a smartly dressed woman in her early fifties at the Washington Street entrance to the Pittsfield Building.
“Where to?” asked Tania.
“Astor and Banks,” responded the fare.
Tania took a left onto Michigan Avenue.
“May I ask you a question?” said Tania. “You don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to.”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“Which do you like better? ‘I gave him my youth, my happiness, my life, my fortune’ or ‘I gave him my youth, my happiness, my life, MY FORTUNE’?”
“The second one, but I’m prejudiced; I’m in the process of getting a divorce. Are you an actress?”
“Yes, and a taxi driver and a coat check girl.”
“I need someone to sing ‘Down by the Old Mill Stream’ to my son on his twenty-fifth birthday. Can you do that?”
“You mean, ‘Down by the old mill stream, not the river but the stream. Where I first met you, not me but you’?” vocalized Tania.
“That’s it exactly. I used to sing it for him when he was a kid; he loved it.”
Tania continued, “You were sixteen, not seventeen but sixteen.”
The woman joined in.
“The village queen, not the king but the queen. Down by the old, not the new but the old mill stream, not the river but the stream.”
Tania showed up for her audition at 7 p.m. on Tuesday. Billy Miller and a couple of board members, including Charlie, were in the auditorium. She wore a long-sleeve 1950s chemise dress she’d found at Vintage Values. She had dyed it black, and it was still damp. Tania stood onstage. She began her monologue and then wrapped it up.
“He used to leave me alone for weeks at a time and make love to other women
and betray me before my very eyes; he wasted my money and made fun of my
feelings . . . And, in spite of all that, I loved him and was true to him. And not only
that, now that he is dead, I am still true and constant to his memory. I have shut
myself forever within these walls and will wear these weeds to the very end.”
Tania paused for a couple of seconds. Well, I did it, she thought.
Billy Miller picked up the part of the landowner. He laughed contemptuously and riffed on the dialogue.
“Weeds! I don’t understand what you take me for. As if I don’t know why you wear
that masquerade and bury yourself between these four walls. It’s so when some
poor fool goes by your window, he’ll think,‘There lives the righteous Tania.’ I see
right through you.”
“WHY ARE YOU TALKING TO ME LIKE THAT?!”
Tania burst into tears and covered her face with her dye-stained hands.
