"He looked like a filthy flamingo," I read and fling the bastard book across the hard wood table like some hand wave over an accordion.
The damn guy sitting across from me, a friend of mine, really, just looks at me with stones in his eyes. Salvatore's Pizzeria with its coal oven baked pizza in Wichita's historic Italian district. We're there. In a neighborhood not far from the more mainline downtown district within which the city council, with their greasy-Koch Brothers-commercial real estate swipin' palms voted to gut the old building that had housed a quaint church-run coffee shop. This was against the recommendation of the city's Historic Preservation Council. Well, I dig history in much the way I love the Starlight Drive-In and this town's Little Mexico and Little Vietnam districts. The way I go for the pepperoni and dark beer and old used books absent an ISBN while my little rock n' roll is playin'.
"So you still think about your childhood friend?" he asks. "What's her name, Suzanne?"
"Yeah, I've known her since third grade. One day in science class in seventh grade, I heard this girl's voice coming from a lab table across the room. Heard her mention Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts and I thought, man, cool as life. She had a blue ribbon in her hair."
I change the subject back. "A filthy fuck'n flamingo." Now that's crackerjack description. It's from one of the greatest novels ever -- Slaughterhouse Five.
"You don't have to write like Vonnegut," Reese says. He concedes, knowing writing is the only thing I want to talk about. "I'd like to read more about that guy from Jett."
"Fuck that guy from Jett," I say and take another sip of beer. "My ex-inlaws read that shit." I pause, think and soften my tone. "I have nothing against 'em."
"I hope you do write more because I don't want you to be 89-years-old, having a nurse lift you into a walk-in shower, and you thinking I shoulda' written that fucker."
"I probably won't make it that long," I interject. "My blood pressure's already running high."
"Life is fleeting," Reese says.
Talking about writing, or more specifically, the lack of it raises my anxiety, which accelerates my blood pressure. We're about to enter a new year and I hope it's not hell like the last one. I feel inadequate when my writing output is poor, but I feel inadequate much of the time or I have this year. Like I'm that same awkward high school student walking aimlessly down the hall. I can stand in a room full of professional people, introducing myself and telling what I do, but I wanna say, "I don't believe in this. Networking is antithetical to I and Thou relationships. I want connection. My blog isn't the norm. It's sex, drugs and rock n' roll."
The stress, the worry that keeps me from sitting my butt in a chair and writing -- it's an obstacle to creativity. That's the way the year has been. No great writing. No great TV spots on Kansas Characters, the public television show Reese and I work on.
"You're wrong, buddy," he says. "That piece you did on the opera house was damn good television." I'd reported on an old opera house in Jericho, Kansas (to the southwest on 54) and how volunteers had restored it and were doing shows there again.
"Yeah," I say. "I saw on their Facebook page, they're doing A Christmas Carol."
"Shit, according to you, they already have ghosts in that theater," Reese says.
Reese wavers between belief and disbelief about the existence of God and the unknown. And this is a guy who went to seminary school.
"I'm not knockin' your skepticism," I say. "Hell, it's part of your charm, but I've seen things."
Beauty and heartbreak
A sign in front announced the first performance to be held at the opera house in 65 years -- a production by the Jericho Theater Company of Shakespeare's Macbeth, one of my favorite of the Bard's plays. It's loaded -- witchcraft, murder, tortured souls. It was a fitting choice for a performance hall long said to be inhabited by spirits.
Georgia Fitzsimmons, the jaunty octogenarian woman who persevered against political odds to save the opera house, pointed out the two balconies in the 900-seat theater, the orchestra pit and Wurlitzer organ said to sometimes play by itself, the soft-colored mural painting of a meadow above the proscenium arch... She's a retired actress and high school drama teacher who delights in theatrical trivia. "The opera house opened in 1895," she said. "Now, later that year a couple of vaudevillians named Joe and Myra Keaton performed here with Harry Houdini in a traveling medicine show. A week later, Myra gave birth in Piqua, Kansas to a little boy you know as Buster Keaton."
She loves to drop names.
At 81, Georgia moved with the vivacity of a woman at least 30 years younger, gesturing with the force of an operatic diva. Gracile, with long silver hair tied back in a pony tail, her pink eyeglasses, T-shirt, khaki capris and red slippers, she cast a casual vibe, undefined by age. The front of her shirt featured wild cartoon drawings of a singer with a guitar, an artist's pallet, curtains and a stage. The back read, "The arts enrich communities."
"I heard this place is haunted," I said.
"It's been known to be frequented by spirits," she replied.
Georgia knew the opera house was haunted when she was a child. She sensed an abnormal presence the night she made her debut in the theater at age 7, performing a tap dance routine while a big band played Swing on a Star. By the time the theater closed in 1953, she was a veteran of its stage. And she'd ceased being afraid, having accepted the phantoms as a part of life there -- or the afterlife.
We stood there for a moment, the grand building permeated by a corpse-like quiet. All dead. Suddenly --
Slam!
"Oh Jesus!" I exclaimed.
A door backstage shut violently, then creaked open and again -- slam!
"Oh, I bet that's Mary Lee," Georgia said, as if talking about an old friend. "She wants us to know she's here."
"Is she always so volatile about it?"
"Oh, she's a little tempest, but very vulnerable," Georgia said. "She carries a lot of unresolved baggage from her mortal life."
"Baggage?"
"Heartbreak. Would you like to hear that story?" Georgia asked me.
"Georgia," I said -- I was developing a feeling of familiarity with her. "I live for stories."
She led me across the oak floors in the front lobby to a vanilla colored plaster wall between the gentlemen's and ladies' rooms. A glass case was filled with memorabilia -- costume hats, playbills and telegrams. Above, there was a row of time gone black and white photographs -- some of celebrities with their autographs, others of local actors and musicians who had entertained on the opera house stage.
One photograph -- the year 1920 was engraved on a plaque below -- was a standout. The face of a young woman adorned in a Renaissance era dress, standing in a balcony. "That's Mary Lee McLaughlin," Georgia said, pointing to --
"My god," I said. "She's ravishing."
Her eyes were dark and yearning. Ephemeral, yet everlasting. Innocent yet sensual. Lips fierce, but fragile. Like I could see inside her soul and she was looking inside mine. We felt each other's loneliness. I desperately wanted -- needed -- to hold her. Close. Her delicate body against mine. Skin to skin. Time -- the enemy, distance -- the spoiler of hearts -- they didn't exist. her body against mine They didn't exist.
"Yeah, she was a goddess," Georgia said, breaking the spell. At the bottom of the picture, a young man bent to the ground looked up at her. He was handsome all right, but didn't command the reaction she did. I guessed correctly that they were playing Romeo and Juliet.
Georgia continued. "It was well before my time, of course, but my parents and the old timers around here said she was breathtaking on stage -- just immortal. She was a celebrity in this town and probably could've gone on to Broadway and silent pictures."
"But that didn't happen?"
"No."
I imagined all the young men wanted to marry her.
"She only loved one man," Georgia said with a kind of sorrow in her voice.
"The man in the picture?"
"Oh, I'll get to him later," she said. "It was another man." She shook her head. "Just one of those things."
"What happened to her?" I asked.
"Come with me," she said and led me back to her office. I could barely keep up with her brisk pace.
The room was cramped with the odor of dirt and old paper. I wondered how Georgia's big desk ever fit through the doorway. From that room, she handled logistics in the theater, talked on her cell phone to promoters about future acts to bring in. More pictures from productions aligned the walls. She went to a rusted file cabinet in the back of the room and grabbed an old gray photo album from a box. It was filled with ancient pictures of sets, stage crews and thespians. No doubt, some of the pictures were over 100 years old. There were pictures of Mary Lee. And another picture...of a man.
"That's the man she loved," Georgia said. He was wearing a boater straw hat with a band around it, a slim charcoal colored suit with silver pinstripes, a watch and chain bound to his vest and a handkerchief sticking regally from his breast pocket. Standing still, he yet exuded swagger. His grin, while a bit boyish, was nevertheless the smile of a confident man. He looked about 20 years older than Mary Lee did in all her pictures, but it was age worn well.
"Was he an actor?" I asked.
"No," Georgia said. "But he was a patron of the arts. D.L. Chatham -- he was a prominent business man. Owned several commercial buildings, president of the Elks Club, president of the Chamber of Commerce, served on the bank board, a lot of boards and committees, actually. He was a deacon at one of the churches."
"Sounds like he was quite eligible," I said.
(Pause.) "He had connections with gangsters and bootleggers."
"Yeah, from that picture, you can tell he had chutzpah."
I looked a bit imploringly at Georgia, eager for more information.
"He and Mary Lee were sleeping together," she said, flatly.
It made sense to me. "Well, you said she loved him."
"He was married with five kids."
"One of those," I said.
They kept their affair discrete, "but it was an open secret," Mary Lee said.
I thought it sad that this beautiful woman who could've had any man she wanted chose some guy who probably didn't respect her and was stringing her along. Someone emotionally unavailable.
"Did he love her as much as she loved him?" I asked.
"For her, I think it was love, intimacy, feeling emotionally connected to someone, filling a need," Georgia said. "For him, I think it was all about sex and conquest. He was a voracious man. She wasn't the first woman -- or actress -- he'd cheated on his wife with." (I noted the scorn raising in her voice.)
It was the same old story. She wanted him to leave his wife and be with her. The man had a nice little life. He wasn't going to leave all that.
"I don't think a man can ever love as hard as a woman," Georgia said. "Mary Lee was vivacious and dramatic. She was a passionate girl and she loved passionately. People can call her a homewrecker and I'm not excusing what she did, but you have to look at it all in context. She stepped here off a train from Montana. Just a young, naive 19-year-old girl who'd never been away from home before. This charming, witty, important man made her feel special and loved. Of course, it could only end in hurt."
"He hurt her?"
"They were together for two years. Then one day, he just ended the relationship. Nobody knows why. Maybe his wife threatened him with divorce. Maybe he was simply through with her. Needless to say, she was heartbroken. Despondent."
"The poor girl," I said.
"I've been married three times. I know what grief feels like. I imagine she felt like a part of her died. She stopped eating or going out. She was missing play rehearsals. Not performing at her optimum level. Today, we call it depression."
"And this is the baggage?" I said. "The heartbreak she carries beyond the grave?"
"They found her body in her bathtub. She'd cut herself and bled to death."
"Jesus Christ," I said.
"Twenty-one years old," Georgia said, her voice heavy with the waste of it all. "There was speculation that she was pregnant with Chatham's child, but we'll never know."
Public opinion was split. Some turned against Chatham. Mary Lee was beloved in the community and there were those who blamed him, fairly or unfairly, for her suicide. There were also self-righteous types who called her a "whore" and said she reaped what she sewed.
"Slut shaming," I said. "People haven't changed a hell of a lot."
I asked what happened to Chatham. He'd been a big fish in town.
"You remember the man kneeling in the picture of Mary Lee in the balcony?"
"Yes."
"That was Baron Sturgis. He was a popular actor here of the time. Also destined for bigger things. Well he was secretly in love with Mary Lee. Oh, it was another of those open secrets. One night he went to this speakeasy. This was Prohibition and the gin was a-flowing. Jazz band and all. Just wild stuff. If you wanted trouble, you could find it there. Well Chatham was there, boozing it up, had another young trophy woman on his arm. Baron walked up to him, said, 'This is for Mary Lee, you sonofabitch' and fired a colt .45 pistol right square into his gut."
Baron was arrested, charged with murder, but his parents were wealthy society people from the East Coast. They came to Kansas, hired a high-priced lawyer who got the district attorney to reduce the charge to manslaughter. It was one of those wealthy white male privilege things. The judge sentenced him to seven years in prison, and he got out in three.
"He never got over it, any of it," Georgia said. "He became an alcoholic, died a lonely death."
Lives ruined. And poor, sweet Mary Lee. "Did she leave a note or anything?" I asked.
"Yes. Of course there weren't copy machines back then, but that letter was transcribed. It went around. I have a copy of it here somewhere." She rummaged through old photo albums, scrapbooks and manila folders until she found it.
Everything is nothingness. I cannot be little Mary Lee McLaughlin anymore for she is barely known to me. The darkness of night draws me deeper into an abyss. The sunlight shining through my window is loud and melancholy. I cannot eat. I cannot cry. I cannot feel. All is despair. I pray God's forgiveness. I long to be held in the sweet arms of death.
"I wonder if she had a predisposition to depression," I said. "Like maybe the affair, the heartbreak just exacerbated it."
"I've wondered that too," Georgia said. "She was an artist and you know a lot of creative types --"
"Yes, I'm, uh, very well aware."
There was a lull in the conversation as we looked at each other.
"I guess the resources weren't available then for her to get help," I said.
"Mental health? Depression? Mental illness? Those terms didn't exist. They didn't have anything like that." She paused. "I think if it happened today, the affair and all, that she'd live through it."
"I hope she finds peace."
Georgia smiled. "I think it's coming around."
I told her I wanted to take video of Mary Lee's grave, but Georgia said her body was taken home and laid to rest in Montana.
We walked back into the auditorium. It looked darker than we'd left it. A sound barely decipherable, but one I took to be crying, floated in the dust. It wasn't a loud anguished cry, more like the sound of release. "Well, what the hell am I doing?" I said, coming out of my daze. I pulled my iPhone out of my jeans pocket to record the sound, but it was gone.
"I'd like to get some paranormal stuff on video," I told Georgia, but she said the spirits were elusive and unpredictable. "You can always try." I told her I at least wanted her on video, saying the place was haunted." She happily obliged.
The thrust of the story turned out not to be the haunting or the whole Mary Lee-Chatham-Baron story, but how this temple of the arts -- built for $80,000 in 1895 -- was restored to its original grandeur, with some modern conveniences added. How it took 22 years of fundraising, grant writing and wrangling with city council to raise the $9 mil. needed to revive the opera house and maintain its aesthetic integrity, while bringing it to code. It's now a 501-c-3 corporation, on the National Register of Historic Places and owned by the city, which wasn't always amenable to preservation. At one point, an earlier council body was leaning toward destroying the disused building and giving a tax break for a super QuikTrip to be built in its spot.
"We brought it back from the brink of death," Georgia said.
Georgia had just retired from teaching when she took on the preservation cause. She'd battled The Establishment and won before. In her last year of teaching, she had to fight the administration and school board to let her present the play, Angels in America. There were objections to the Pulitzer Prize winning drama for its "emphasis on homosexuality and AIDS." But she got the play shown.
"The school district's come around since then," she said. "Now the kids are putting on stuff like The Laramie Project and The Vagina Monologues. We'll do stuff like that at the opera house, same as the lighter stuff. We wanna show a diversity of the arts. Tony Bennett and Peter Frampton are slated for '19."
----------------------------------------
That night I watched Macbeth, performed flawlessly by the area's local actors.
Out, out brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more...
I stuck around after the show, doing video interviews with some of the actors and audience members, getting their reactions to the show and the resurrected Jericho Opera House. While a few people chatted in the lobby, waiting to lock up, I was the last person to leave the auditorium. Standing at the doorway to leave, I turned around to take one last look at the theater.
An apparition, translucent, almost invisible, floated on the stage. I stood, frightened, yet transfixed and motionless. The figure glowed more vividly and I knew I was staring at the ghost of Mary Lee McLaughlin, radiant, commanding the stage in death as she had in life. Her face was a white flame aglow with that same vulnerable attraction that made me want to hold her. how could anyone hurt her? why do we hurt each other? I looked into her light, her eyes seeing deep inside me, parts I didn't want anyone to see and I looked deeply into hers, and we knew each other's brokenness, my fears lessening. I could only hold to a belief that she -- we -- would be okay, that the scars of yesterday and today would go their way and we would find healing and become whole.
Goodbye Mary Lee
The Wilderness
"It was an all right story," I say. "Made people feel good. No different than stories I was writing for the Anderson American 20 years ago."
"Well I think this one affected you a bit more than some others."
He's probably right. "I kind of fell in love with -- well, with a ghost. Not like I was in love with a real person, but a feeling or an idea. I mean, in that picture -- it was taken all those years ago, but I could sense (I searched for the right words) she needed love."
"You've always had a thing for damsels in distress," Reese says.
It's funny. Reese once told me he was proud of me for how I'd rebounded from my own private hell after getting divorced. But he doesn't know -- only God knows -- the obstacles and struggles, the fears and phobias I feel every day of my life. He doesn't know how I sat in my therapist's office, saying I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and do everything right, then started sobbing.
"But there would be the butterfly effect and then I wouldn't have my kids," I said to my therapist, Jennifer. "I love my kids more than anything."
Reese and I make a little small talk about our families. I have my two teenage kids, Max and Gabby. He finally married his live-in girlfriend, Janie. She has an 8-year-old son from a previous relationship, Reese's step-son, Carson.
"You know," I say, before we leave the pizza place, "I was in church last Sunday. The preacher talked about the Israelites wandering 40 years in the wilderness and how only two men of a certain generation lived to see the Promised Land. He said we all have a wilderness in our lives and some of us never make it out. I don't think I'll ever make it out of the wilderness and I accept that."
Reese looks at me, a look of respect. He always appreciates spiritual contemplation. "That's pretty profound."
I reach into my laptop bag and show him a picture my daughter drew for me.
"There's still beautiful stuff in the world," I say. "I'm never gonna stop trying to have a good life."
"La Donna e Mobile" -- Enrico Caruso
