Almost Famous Women by Megan Mayhew Bergman Page A

friends.
    â€œI’ll teach you to read and sing,” she’d say, shaking her head. “But not to work with hair.” The girls knew they were not to play with the doll; it would be sold for rent money.
    Norma knows when they wake up they’ll be alone in the dim kitchen, smearing day-old bread with measured dollops of blueberry jam, warmed on the stove. They’ll do the washing until their fingers are numb with cold, sing songs their mother taught them, tell stories in bed about imaginary lovers—what does a lover do so much as kiss?—while the modest fire becomes nothing but smoldering coals. They’re a houseful of skinny girls, dirt-poor ingenues singing arias from a cabin in the swampy part of town near the mill, a place the shipbuilders have fled. The young forest is beginning to grow again, but lately it’s bare enough to see the lean deer moving through.
    In the morning, Norma, too ill to eat, stares out of the window onto the Megunticook River, its edges frozen and tinged with crimson dye from the mills. Snow and ice form a diamond-like crust over the windowpanes, illuminated by pale rays of sunshine, so she peers out at the river through a clear spot on the window, her breath fogging up the sparkling glass.
    The rose hips outside the window are black; months before, when they were plump and orange, she used to chew them. Poor girl’s candy.
    Vincent is nearby, one small foot folded underneath her body as she mends Cora’s blouse. Her lips are moving and Norma wonders if she’s reciting or composing; it’s as if she’s already gone from them. “We must save for Vincent’s sake,” Cora says. “We must try for a scholarship, subscribe to poetry magazines.”
    Though Norma and Kathleen both write poetry, sing, and act, only Vincent gets letters in the mail, letters full of praise and promise. It is,Norma thinks, as if only one of us can get out of this cold house, and it’s going to be Vincent.
    Very well and good, she thinks, trying to be just in her wants and needs. All is as it should be.
    There are things to look forward to, though, she tells herself. Boats on the bay in summer, reading on the rocks, picnics among the ferns on Mount Battie.
    She begins to shake. Her teeth chatter; in her head it’s the sound of ceramic plates falling against each other in the sink.
    â€œCome sit by me, Hunk,” Vincent says, beckoning Norma to her chair. “It’s cold by the window and you’re dreadfully sick.”
    Norma curls next to her sister in the chair, as she often does, wriggling one arm behind Vincent’s back and laying a cheek on her bony shoulder. When she breathes in, her sister’s claret-colored hair falls across her face, and she feels deep love tinged with resentment, like the pure ice leaching red dye from the river.
ACT II
    Norma’s thick hair is cut to her chin and she wears her secondhand fur coat with pomp, turning the collar up so it brushes against her wide but handsome jawline. While her sister’s beauty is elfin andethereal, Norma’s is sumptuous, hardy, fervent. Vincent may be the genius, Norma thinks, but I am the femme fatale.
    Vincent calls her Old Blond Plumblossom. They’re stalking across MacDougal Street in worn heels, a block from the theater where they both work, hashing out a three-part harmony for the stage. Norma relishes the rush of mingling with so many people in the city. The way she can dance until midnight or give all her energy to rehearsals that last until daybreak, with Eugen and Jig staggering around and fighting, the women drinking and stitching costumes, legs dangling over the small stage.
    â€œCharlie lost his temper last night,” Norma says, interrupting Vincent’s singing. “He doesn’t like Ida being cast—”
    â€œDear Charlie is always losing his temper,” Vincent says, sighing, slight affectation in her voice, picked up from