City of Girls

He paused for a moment, wiped his eyes, and then spoke again.

“Now listen,” he said. “I stopped believing in God during the Great War, and you would’ve too, if you’d seen what I saw. But sometimes I have relapses—usually when I get too drunk or overly emotional, and right now, I’m a little of both, so forgive me, but here goes. Let’s bow our heads and have a prayer.”

I couldn’t believe it, but he was serious.

We bowed our heads. Anthony took my hand again, and I felt the thrill that I always got from his attentions, no matter how slight. Somebody took my other hand and gave it a squeeze. I could tell from her familiar touch that it was Celia.

I’m not sure I’d ever had a happier moment than this.

“Dear God of whatever nature you are,” said Billy. “Shine your favor on these humble players. Shine your favor on this wretched old theater. Shine your favor on those bums out there and make them love us. Shine your favor on this useless little endeavor of ours. What we’re doing here tonight doesn’t matter a bit in the cruel scheme of the world, but we’re doing it anyhow. Make it worth our while. We ask this in your name—whoever you are, and whether we believe in you or not, which most of us don’t. Amen.”

“Amen,” we all said.

Billy took another swig off his flask. “Anything you’d like to add to that, Peg?”

My Aunt Peg grinned, and in that moment she looked about twenty years old.

“Just get out there, kids,” she said, “and kick the living shit out of it.”

—

From Walter Winchell, writing in the New York Daily Mirror:

I’m not bothered about whatever play Edna Parker Watson is in, just so long as she is in it! She stands head and shoulders above other actresses who think they know how! . . . She looks like royalty, but she can bring the ham! . . .

City of Girls

is a masterpiece of flapdoodle—and if that sounds like a complaint, folks, believe me, it is not. In these dark times, we could all use some more flapdoodle. . . . Celia Ray—and boo to whoever has been hiding

her

all these years—is an iridescent minx. You might not want to leave her alone with your boyfriend or your husband, but is that any way to judge a starlet? . . . Don’t worry, chippies, there’s something tasty for you in this show, too: I could hear all the ladies in the audience sighing for Anthony Roccella, who oughta be in pictures. . . . Donald Herbert is hilarious as a blind pickpocket—and that’s what I call some politicians these days! . . . Now, as far as Arthur Watson goes, he’s way too young for his wife, but she’s way too good for him—so I bet that’s how they make things work! I don’t know if he’s as wooden a fellow offstage as he is in the spotlight, but if he is, I feel sorry for his cutie-pie wife!

—

Edna got the first laugh of the show.

Act 1, scene 1: Mrs. Alabaster is at a tea party with a few other opulent ladies. Amidst the general chatter of idle gossip, she casually mentions that her husband was hit by a car the night before. The ladies all gasp in shock, and one of them asks, “Critical, my dear?”

“Always,” replies Mrs. Alabaster.

There’s a long beat. The ladies stare at her in arch confusion. Mrs. Alabaster stirs her tea calmly, with one pinky raised. Then she looks up in purest innocence: “I’m sorry, did you mean his condition? Oh, he’s dead.”

The audience roared.

Backstage, Billy grabbed my aunt’s hand and said, “We got ’em, Pegsy.”

—

From Thomas Lessig, in the Morning Telegraph:

The high-battery sex appeal of Miss Celia Ray will keep many a gentleman glued to his seat, but the wise audience member would do well to train his eyes on Edna Parker Watson—an international sensation who announces herself in

City of Girls

as a star whose big day in America has finally come.

—

Later in Act 1, Lucky Bobby is trying to convince Mrs. Alabaster to pawn her valuables in order to finance the speakeasy.

“I can’t sell this watch!” she exclaims, holding up a large gold watch on a handsome chain. “I got this for my husband!”

“Good trade, lady.” My boyfriend nods approvingly.

Edna and Anthony were hitting their punch lines like badminton birdies right over the footlights—and they did not miss a single shot.

“But my father taught me never to lie, cheat, or steal!” says Mrs. Alabaster.

“So did mine!” Lucky Bobby puts his hand over his heart. “My pops taught me that a man’s honor is all he’s got in this world—unless you get a chance for the big score, and then it’s okay to fleece your brother and sell your sister to a whorehouse.”

“But only if it were a quality whorehouse, one hopes,” says Mrs. Alabaster.

“You and me come from the same kind of people, lady!” says Lucky Bobby, and then they launch into their duet, “Our Dastardly, Bastardly Ways”—and oh, how hard we had fought Olive for the right to use the word “bastardly” in a song!

This was my favorite moment of the show. Anthony had a tap-dance solo in the middle of the number, during which he lit up the place like an emergency flare. I can still see his predatory grin in that spotlight, dancing as though he aimed to tear a hole through the stage. The audience—the handpicked cream of New York City theatergoing society—was stomping their feet along with him like a bunch of apple-knockers. I felt like my own heart was going to explode. They loved him. Then, somewhere underneath my joy at his success, I felt a pinch of dread: This guy is about to become a star, and I am about to lose him.

But when the number was over, and Anthony rushed backstage, he tackled me in his sweaty costume, pushed me up against a wall, and kissed me with all his might and glory—and I forgot, for just a moment there, about my fears.

“I’m the best,” he growled. “Did you see that out there, baby? I’m the best. I’m the best there ever was!”

“You are, you are! You are the very best there ever was!” I cried, for that is what twenty-year-old girls say to their boyfriends when they are desperately in love.

(To be fair to both Anthony and me, though, he was pretty damn electrifying.)

Then Celia did her striptease—singing plaintively in that gruff Bronx accent of hers about how bad she wanted to have a baby—and she had the audience simply netted. She somehow managed to look adorable and pornographic at the same time, which is not easily done. By the end of her dance, the audience was hooting and hollering like drunks at a burlesque show. And it wasn’t just the men who had hot pants for her, either; I swear I heard some female voices in the cheers.

Then there was the pleasant hum of intermission—the men lighting cigarettes in the lobby, and the press of satiny women in the bathroom. Billy told me to go out and mingle among the crowd, to get a feeling for their reactions. “I would do it myself,” he said, “but too many of them know me. I don’t want their polite reactions; I want their real reactions. Look for real reactions.”

“What am I looking for?” I asked.

“If they’re talking about the play, that’s good. If they’re talking about where they parked their cars, that’s bad. But mostly, watch for signs of pride. When an audience is happy with what they’re watching, they always look so goddamn proud of themselves. As if they made the play themselves, the selfish bastards. Go out there and tell me if they’re looking proud of themselves.”

I pushed my way through the crowd and examined the happy, rosy faces all around me. Everyone looked rich, well fed, and deeply satisfied. They were chattering nonstop about the play—about Celia’s figure, about Edna’s charm, about the dancers, about the songs. They were repeating bits of jokes to each other, and making each other laugh all over again.

“I’ve never seen so many people looking so proud of themselves,” I reported back to Billy.

“Good,” he said. “They damn well should be.”

He gave another speech to the cast before the second curtain—a shorter speech this time.

“The only thing that matters now is what you leave ’em with,” he said. “If you drop this thing in the middle of the second act, they’ll forget that they ever loved you. You’ve gotta earn it all over again now. When you hit that finale, it can’t just be good; it’s got to be stupendous. Keep it zinging, kids.”

Act 2, scene 1: The law-and-order mayor has come to Mrs. Alabaster’s mansion, intent on shutting down the illegal gambling operation and bordello she is reputed to now be running. He comes in disguise, but Lucky Bobby is onto him, and gives warning. The showgirls quickly put maids’ costumes over their spangled leotards, and the croupiers disguise themselves as butlers. The customers pretend to be visiting the mansion for a garden tour, and lace tablecloths are thrown over the gambling tables. Mr. Herbert, as the blind pickpocket, politely takes the mayor’s coat and then helps himself to the man’s wallet. Mrs. Alabaster invites the mayor to join her for a spot of tea in the solarium, discreetly dropping a stack of gambling chips down her bodice in the process.

“You’ve got yourself a pretty high-grade house here, Mrs. Alabaster,” says the mayor while peering around the place, looking for signs of illegal activity. “Real fancy-like. Did your family come over on the Mayflower, or something?”

“Dear me, no,” says Edna in her highest-tone accent while fanning herself elegantly with a deck of poker cards. “My family always had their own boats.”

Toward the end of the show, when Edna sang her heartbreaking ballad, “I’m Considering Falling in Love,” the theater was so silent it could have been empty. And when she finished the last wistful note, they got up out of their seats and cheered for her. They made Edna return to the stage for four bows after that song, before the play could continue. I’d heard the word “showstopper” before but had never really understood what it meant in actual practice.

Edna Parker Watson had literally stopped the show.

When it came time for the big-finish number of “Let’s Make Ours a Double,” I grew annoyed and distracted by watching Arthur Watson. He was trying to keep up with the dance steps of the other cast members, and making a poor job of it. Thankfully, his awfulness didn’t seem to disturb the audience too much, and you couldn’t hear his tuneless singing over the orchestra. Anyway, the audience was singing and clapping along with the chorus (“Sin babies, gin babies / Come right on in, babies!”). The Lily Playhouse glittered with a sheen of pure, shared joy.

Then it was over.

Curtain calls followed—so many curtain calls. Bows and more bows. Bouquets of flowers thrown upon the stage. Then finally the houselights came up, and the audience gathered their coats and were gone like smoke.

The whole exhausted lot of us, cast and crew, wandered out on that empty stage and just stood there for a moment in the dust of what we had just created—speechless in the staggering incredulity of what we had just seen ourselves do.

—

From Nichols T. Flint, in the New York Daily News:

Playwright and director William Buell has made a sly move to cast Edna Parker Watson in such a light role. Mrs. Watson throws herself into this candy-coated but clever play with the cheerful spirit of a natural-born good sport. In so doing, she has covered herself with glory while elevating the players around her. You cannot ask for a more entertaining spectacle than this—not in these dark times. Go see this play and forget your troubles. Mrs. Watson reminds us why we should import more actors from London to New York—and perhaps not let them leave!

—

We spent the rest of the night at Sardi’s, waiting for the reviews to come in and drinking ourselves half blind in the process. Needless to say, the Lily Players were not a theater group normally accustomed to waiting for reviews at Sardi’s—or to getting reviews at all—but this had not been a normal show.

“It all depends on what Atkinson and Winchell say,” Billy told us. “If we can nail down both the high-end praise and the low-end praise, we’ll have a hit.”

“I don’t even know who Atkinson is,” Celia said.

“Well, babycakes, as of tonight he knows who you are—that much I can promise you. He couldn’t keep his eyes off you.”

“Is he famous? Does he have money?”

“He’s a newspaperman. He’s got no money. He’s got nothing but power.”

Then I watched a remarkable thing happen. Olive approached Billy, carrying two martinis in her hands. She offered one to him. He took it in surprise, but his surprise only deepened when she raised her glass to him in a toast.

“You’ve done ably well with this show, William,” she said. “Very ably well.”

He burst out laughing. “Very ably well! I will take that, coming from you, as the highest praise ever given to a director!”

Edna was the last cast member to arrive. She’d been mobbed at the stage door by admirers who wanted her autograph. She could have dodged them just by going upstairs to her apartment and waiting it out, but she’d indulged the populace with her presence. Then she must have taken a quick bath and changed clothes, because she walked in looking clean and fresh, and wearing the most expensive-looking little blue suit I’d ever seen (only expensive looking if you knew what you were looking for, which I did), with a fox stole thrown casually over one shoulder. On her arm was that good-looking idiot husband of hers, who had almost ruined our finale with his terrible dancing. He was beaming as though he were the star of the night.

“The much-praised Edna Parker Watson!” Billy cried, and we all cheered.

“Be careful, Billy,” said Edna. “The praise hasn’t come in yet. Arthur, darling, could you fetch me the most icy cocktail available?”

Arthur went wandering off in search of the bar, and I wondered if he would be smart enough to find his way back.

“You’ve made a wild success of things, Edna,” said Peg.

“You did it all, my loves,” said Edna, gazing up at both Billy and Peg. “You are the geniuses and the creators. I’m just a humble war refugee, grateful to have a job.”

“I have the worst desire to get falling-down drunk just about now,” said Peg. “I can’t bear the wait for the notices. How do you remain so calm, Edna?”

“How do you know I’m not already falling-down drunk myself?”

“Tonight I should be sensible and mind my intake,” said Peg. “No, never mind, I don’t feel like it—Vivian, will you chase after Arthur and tell him to bring back about three times the number of drinks he had originally planned?”

If he can manage the math, I thought.

I headed to the bar. I was trying to wave down the bartender when a man’s voice said, “Could I buy you a drink, miss?” I turned around with a flirty smile, and there was my brother, Walter.

It took me a moment to recognize him, because it was so incongruous to see him in New York City—in my world, surrounded by my people. Also, the family resemblance threw me for a loop. His face and mine were so similar that for a disorienting instant, I almost thought I’d bumped into a mirror.

What on earth was Walter doing here?

“You don’t look too happy to see me,” he said, with a careful smile.

I didn’t know if I was happy or unhappy; I was just tremendously disoriented. All I could think was that I must be in trouble. Maybe my parents had gotten wind of my immoral behavior and sent my big brother to retrieve me. I found myself glancing over Walter’s shoulder to see if my parents were with him, which definitely would have signaled the end of a good time.

“Don’t be so jumpy, Vee,” he said. “It’s just me.” It was as if he could read my mind. Which didn’t serve to relax me any further. “I came by to see your little play. I liked it. You kids did a fine job.”

“But why are you in New York City at all, Walter?” I was suddenly aware that my dress was revealing too much cleavage and that there was a hickey remnant on my neck.

“I quit school, Vee.”

“You quit Princeton?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Does Dad know?”

“Yes, he does.”

None of this made any sense. I was the delinquent member of the family, not Walter. But now he had dropped out of Princeton? I suddenly got a vision of Walter breaking wild—throwing away all his years of good behavior to come to New York to join me in a carnival of drinking, carousing, and dancing himself to smithereens at the Stork Club. Maybe I’d inspired him to be bad!

“I’m joining the Navy,” he said.

Ah. I should’ve known better.

“I start Officer Candidate School in three weeks, Vee. I’ll be in training right here in New York City, just up the river, on the Upper West Side. The Navy’s got a decommissioned battleship moored on the Hudson and they’re using it as a school. Right now, they’re short of officers, and they’ll take anyone with two years of college. They’ll train us in just three months, Vee. I start right after Christmas. When I graduate, I’ll be an ensign. I’ll ship out in the spring and go wherever they need to send me.”

“What does Dad have to say about you quitting Princeton?” I asked.

My voice sounded weird and stilted in my ears. The awkwardness of this encounter was still throwing me off, but I was doing my best to make conversation, pretending as though everything was perfectly normal—pretending as though Walter and I chatted with each other at Sardi’s every week.

“He hates it like gum,” Walter said. “But it’s not his call to make. I’m of age, and I can make my own choices. I called Peg and told her I was coming to the city. She said I could stay with her for a few weeks before OCS training begins. See a bit of New York, take in the sights.”

Walter would be staying at the Lily? With us degenerates?

“But you didn’t have to join the Navy,” I said dumbly.

(To my mind, Angela, the only people who became sailors were working-class kids with no other options for advancement. I think I’d even heard my father say that, at some point.)

“There’s a war on, Vee,” said Walter. “America will be part of it sooner or later.”

“But you don’t have to be part of it,” I said.

He looked at me with an expression that was both puzzled and disapproving. “It’s my country, Vee. Of course I have to be part of it.”

There was a wild cheer from the other side of the room. A newsboy had just walked in with a handful of early editions.

The raves were already coming in.

—

And look here, Angela, I’ve saved my favorite for last.

From Kit Yardley, in the New York Sun, November 30, 1940:

It is well worth seeing

City of Girls,

if only to enjoy Edna Parker Watson’s costumes—which are delectable, from stem to stern.

SEVENTEEN

We had a hit on our hands.

Within the space of a week, we’d gone from begging people to come see our little play to turning them away at the gates. By Christmas, both Peg and Billy had made back all the money they’d invested, and now the shekels were really pouring in—or so Billy said.

You might have thought that with the success of our show, tensions would have tamped down between Peg and Olive and Billy, but it was not the case. Even with all the accolades and the sold-out house every night, Olive still managed to be anxious about money (her brief experiment with celebration apparently having ended the day after opening night).

Olive’s concern—as she diligently reminded us every day—was that success is always fleeting. It is all well and good, she said, to have City of Girls bankrolling us now, but what will the Lily Playhouse do when the play closes? We had lost our neighborhood audience. The working-class folks whom we’d humbly entertained for so many years had been driven away by our new high ticket prices and our cosmopolitan comedy—and how could we be sure they would return once we went back to business as usual? Because certainly we would be getting back to business as usual sooner or later. It wasn’t as though Billy would stay in New York forever, nor had he promised to write us any more hit shows. And once Edna was lured to a better theater company for a new production—which was bound to happen eventually—we would lose City of Girls. We couldn’t very well expect somebody of Edna’s prestige to stay in our slipshod little playhouse forever. And we couldn’t afford to attract other actors of her caliber once she left. Really, all this abundance had been built on the talents of one woman alone, and that’s an awfully shaky way to run a business.

And on and on it went from Olive—day after day. So much gloom. So much doom. She was a tireless Cassandra, constantly reminding us that ruin was right around the corner, even as we were all intoxicated with victory.

“Be careful, Olive,” said Billy. “Make sure you don’t enjoy a minute of this good fortune—and don’t let anyone else enjoy it, either.”

But even I could see that Olive was correct about one thing: our ongoing success with the show was all due to Edna, who never stopped being extraordinary. I watched that play every night, and I can report that she somehow managed to reinvent the role of Mrs. Alabaster each time. Some actors will get a character right and then freeze the performance, just repeating the same rote expressions and reactions. But Edna’s Mrs. Alabaster never stopped feeling new. She was not delivering her lines, she was inventing them—or so it seemed. And because she was always playing with her delivery and changing the tone, the other players had to stay attentive and vibrant, too.

And New York City certainly rewarded Edna for her gifts.

Edna had been an actress forever, but with the wild success of City of Girls, she now became a star.

The term “star,” Angela, is a vital but tricky designation that can only be bestowed upon a performer by the populace itself. Critics cannot make someone a star. Box-office receipts cannot make someone a star. Mere excellence cannot make someone a star. What makes someone a star is when the people decide to love you en masse. When people are willing to line up at the stage door for hours after a show just to catch a glimpse—that makes you a star. When Judy Garland releases a recording of “I’m Considering Falling in Love” but everyone who saw City of Girls says that your version was better—that makes you a star. When Walter Winchell starts writing gossip about you in his column every week, that makes you a star.

Then there was the table that came to be held for her at Sardi’s every night after the show.

Then there was the announcement that Helena Rubinstein was naming an eye shadow after her (“Edna’s Alabaster”).

Then there was the thousand-word piece in Woman’s Day about where Edna Parker Watson buys her hats.

Then there were the fans, deluging Edna with letters, asking questions like “My own attempt at a career on the stage was interrupted by the financial reversals of my husband—so would you consider taking me on as your protégée? I believe you will be surprised to find out that we have much the same style of acting.”

And then there was this incredible (and very out of character) letter, from none less than Katharine Hepburn herself: “Darlingest Edna—I have just seen your performance, and it drove me insane, and of course I shall have to come and see it about four more times, and then I will jump in a river, because I shall never be as good as you!”

I know about all these letters because Edna asked me to read and respond to them for her, since I had such nice handwriting. This was an easy job for me, now that I didn’t have any new costumes to design. Given that the Lily was running the same production now, week after week, there was no further need for my talents. Aside from mending and maintenance, my duties were over. For that reason, in the wake of our show’s success, I more or less became Edna’s private secretary.

I was the one who turned down all the invitations and pleas. I was the one who arranged the Vogue photo shoot. I was the one who gave a reporter from Time a tour of the Lily for an article called “How to Make a Hit.” And I was the one who escorted around that terrifyingly acerbic theater critic Alexander Woollcott, when he profiled Edna for The New Yorker. We were all worried that he would savage Edna in print (“Alec never takes a nibble out of somebody when a chomp will do,” said Peg), but we needn’t have been concerned, as it turned out. For here was Woollcott on Watson:

Edna Parker Watson possesses the face of a woman who has lived her life in a state of upward dreaming. Enough of those dreams have come true, it appears, to have kept her forehead unlined by worry or sorrow, and her eyes are bright with the expectation of more good news to come. . . . What this actress now possesses is something beyond mere sincerity of feeling; she has an inexhaustible catalogue of

humanness

at her disposal. . . . Too spirited an artist to limit herself to Shakespeare and Shaw, she has recently donated her talents to

City of Girls

—the most dizzy-headed and heel-kicking show we have seen in New York for quite some time. . . . To watch her become Mrs. Alabaster is to watch comedy transmogrify into art. . . . When a breathless fan at the stage door thanked her for coming to New York City at last, Mrs. Watson replied, “Well, my dear, it is not as though I have

so

many claims on my time just now.” If Broadway is wise, that situation shall soon be remedied.

—

Anthony was becoming a bit of a star, too, thanks to City of Girls. He’d got cast in some radio dramas, which he could record in the afternoons without interfering with his performance schedule. He’d also been hired as the new spokesman and model for the Miles Tobacco Company (“Why sweat, when you can smoke?”). So he had good money coming in now, for the first time in his life. But he still hadn’t upgraded his living arrangements.

I’d started leaning on Anthony, trying to convince him to get his own place. Why would such a promising young star still be sharing quarters with his brother in a dank old tenement building that smelled of cooking oil and onions? I was pushing him to rent a nicer apartment, with an elevator and a doorman, and maybe even a garden in the back—and definitely not in Hell’s Kitchen. But he wouldn’t consider it. I don’t know why he so resisted moving out of that filthy fourth-floor walk-up. All I can guess is that he suspected me of trying to make him look more marriageable.

Which was, of course, exactly what I was doing.

—

The problem was that my brother had now met Anthony—and needless to say, he did not approve.

If only there was a way to hide from Walter the fact I was dating Anthony Roccella at all! But Anthony and I were pretty obvious in our lust, and my brother was far too observant to have missed it. Plus, since Walter was now staying at the Lily, he was easily able to see what was going on in my life. He saw it all—the drinking, the back-and-forth flirtations, the rowdy repartee, the general depravity of theater folk. I’d hoped that Walter might get pulled into the fun (certainly the showgirls tried to lure my handsome brother into their embraces many times), but he was far too straitlaced to take the bait of pleasure. Sure, he’d have a cocktail or two, but he wasn’t about to cavort. Instead of joining us, he seemed to monitor us.

I could have asked Anthony to tone down his carnal attentions to me so as not to stir up Walter’s disfavor, but Anthony wasn’t the sort of guy who was going to change his behavior to make anybody feel more comfortable. So my boyfriend still grabbed me, kissed me, and slapped my bottom just as much as ever—whether Walter was in the room or not.

My brother watched, judged, and then finally delivered this condemning analysis of my boyfriend: “Anthony doesn’t seem very marriageable, Vee.”

And now I couldn’t get that weighty word—marriageable—out of my mind. I should say that I had never before even thought of marrying Anthony, nor was I sure that I would ever want to. But suddenly, with Walter’s disapproval hanging over my head, it mattered that my boyfriend wasn’t seen as marriageable. I felt insulted by the word, and maybe a little challenged by it. I felt that I should take this problem on and solve it.

You know—clean up my man a bit.

With this in mind, I had started making suggestions to Anthony—not too subtly, I’m afraid—about how he could boost his status in the world. Wouldn’t he feel more grown-up if he didn’t sleep on a couch? Wouldn’t he be more attractive if he wore slightly less oil in his hair? Wouldn’t he seem more refined if he wasn’t always chewing gum? How about if his speech was somewhat less slangy? For instance, when my brother, Walter, had asked Anthony if he held any career aspirations outside of show business, Anthony had grinned, and said, “Not so’s you’d notice.” Might there have been a more cultivated way to answer this question?

Anthony knew exactly what I was doing—he was no dummy—and he hated it. He accused me of trying to get him to “turn square” in order to make my brother happy, and he wasn’t having it. And it certainly didn’t endear him to Walter.

In those few weeks Walter stayed at the Lily, the tension between my brother and my boyfriend grew so thick you could have busted it up with a sledgehammer. It was an issue of class, an issue of education, an issue of sexual threat, an issue of brother versus lover. But some of it, too, I suspect, was just a matter of unfettered, competitive young maleness. They each had a lot of pride and a lot of machismo, which made every room in New York City too small for the both of them.

Finally it all came to a head one night when a group of us had gone out for drinks at Sardi’s after the show. Anthony had been manhandling me at the bar (to my delight and pleasure, of course) when he caught Walter giving him the stink-eye. Next thing I knew, the two young men were chest to chest.

“You want me to back outta this deal with your sister, dontcha?” Anthony demanded, pushing a little farther into Walter’s space. “Well, just you try to make me do it, captain.”

The way Anthony was grinning at Walter in that moment—leering, really—had an unmistakable edge of threat. For the first time, I could see the Hell’s Kitchen street fighter in my boyfriend. It was also the first time I’d ever seen Anthony look like he cared about something. And in that moment, what he cared about was not me—but the pleasure of punching my brother in the face.

Walter held Anthony’s gaze without blinking and replied in a low tone, “If you’re trying to take a crack at me, son, don’t do it with words.”

I watched Anthony size up my brother—taking note of the football shoulders and the wrestling neck—and think better of it. Anthony dropped his eyes and backed down. He gave a careless laugh and said, “We got no beef here, captain. You’re all right, you’re all right.”

Then he slid back into his customary air of nonchalance and stepped away.

Anthony had made the right call. My brother, Walter, was many things (an elitist, a puritan, and uptight as all hell), but he was not a weakling and he was not a coward.

My brother could’ve pounded my boyfriend straight into the pavement.

Anyone could see that.

—

The next day, Walter took me out to lunch at the Colony so that we could “have a talk.”

I knew exactly what (or, rather, whom) this talk was going to be about, and I dreaded it.

“Please don’t tell Mother and Dad about Anthony,” I asked Walter as soon as we sat down at our table. I hated to even bring up the subject of my boyfriend, but I knew that Walter would, and I figured my best bet was to start off with a plea for my life. My biggest fear was that he was going to report my misdoings to my parents, and that they would barrel right down upon me and clip my wings.

It took awhile for him to answer.

“I want to be fair about this, Vee,” he said.

Of course he did. Walter always wanted to be fair.

I waited, feeling the way I often did with Walter—like a child who has just been called before the headmaster. God, how I wished he was my ally! But he had never been. Even as a boy, he’d never kept a secret for me or conspired with me against the adults. He’d always been an extension of my parents. He’d always behaved more like a father than a peer. Moreover, I’d treated him as such.

Finally he said, “You can’t fool around like this forever, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” I said—although my actual plan, in point of fact, was to fool around like this forever.

“There’s a real world out there, Vee. You’re going to have to put away the balloons and streamers at some point and grow up.”

“Without a doubt,” I agreed.

“You were raised right. I have to trust in that. When the time comes, your breeding will kick in. You’re playing the bohemian now, but eventually you’ll settle down and marry the correct kind of person.”

“Of course I will.” I nodded as though this were my plan precisely.

“If I didn’t believe that you had good sense, I would send you back home to Clinton right now.”

“I don’t blame you!” I cried, in fullest agreement. “If I didn’t believe that I had good sense, I would send myself back home to Clinton right now.”

Which didn’t particularly make sense, but seemed to mollify him. I knew my brother well enough, thank God, to know that my only hope for salvation was to agree with him completely.

“It’s kind of like when I went to Delaware,” he said, softening a bit, after another long silence.

This stopped me up. Delaware? Then I remembered that my brother had spent a few weeks the previous summer in Delaware. He’d been working at a power plant, if I recalled, learning something about electrical engineering.

“Of course!” I said. “Delaware!” I wanted to encourage this positive-sounding track—although I had no idea what he was referring to.

“Some of the people I spent time with in Delaware were pretty rough,” he said. “But you know how that is. Sometimes you want to rub elbows with people who weren’t raised the same way as you. Expand your horizons. Maybe it builds character.”

Well, that was pretentious.

Encouragingly, though, he smiled.

I smiled, too. I tried to look like someone who was busy expanding her horizons and building her character through intentional fraternization with her social inferiors. A difficult look to master in a single facial expression, but I did my best.

“You’re just having your kicks,” he decided, sounding as though he were almost convinced of this diagnosis himself. “It’s innocent enough.”

“That’s right, Walter. I’m just having my kicks. You don’t have to worry about me.”

His face darkened. I’d made a tactical error; I had contradicted him.

“Well, I do have to worry about you, Vee, because I’m starting Officer Candidate School in a few days. I’ll be moving to the battleship uptown, and I won’t be around to keep an eye on you anymore.”

Hallelujah, I thought, while nodding gravely.

“I don’t like the direction I see your life heading in,” he said. “That’s what I wanted to tell you today. I don’t like it at all.”

“I can certainly understand that!” I said, going back to my original strategy of absolute accordance.

“Tell me there’s nothing serious for you about this Anthony fellow.”

“Nothing,” I lied.

“You haven’t crossed the line with him?”

I could feel myself blush. It wasn’t a blush of modesty, but of guilt. Still, it worked in my favor. I must have looked like an innocent girl, embarrassed that her brother had mentioned the subject of sex—however obliquely.

Walter flushed, too. “I’m sorry I had to ask,” he said, protecting my perceived guilelessness. “But I need to know.”

“I understand,” I said. “But I would never . . . not with that kind of guy. Not with anybody, Walter.”

“All right, then. If you say so, I trust you. I won’t say anything to Mother and Dad about Anthony,” he said. (I took my first easy breath of the day.) “But you have to promise me something.”

“Anything.”

“If you get into any trouble with this fellow, you will call me.”

“I will,” I swore. “But I won’t get into any trouble. I promise.”

Suddenly, Walter looked old. It could not have been easy, being a twenty-two-year-old elder statesman on his way to war. Trying to uphold his familial duties and his patriotic duties all at the same time.

“I know you’ll end this thing with Anthony soon, Vee. Just promise me you’ll be smart. I know what a smart kid you are. You wouldn’t do anything reckless. You’ve got too good a head on your shoulders for that.”

My heart broke a little in that moment—watching my brother dig so deep into his pristine imagination, desperately searching for ways to think the best of me.

EIGHTEEN

Angela, I don’t want to tell you this next part of the story.

I think I’ve been stalling.

It’s painful, this next part.

Let me stall a little while longer.

No, let me get it over with.

—

Now it was the end of March 1941.

It had been a long winter. New York had been hit with a murderous snowstorm earlier in the month, and it took the city weeks to dig out from under it. We were all sick of being cold. The Lily was a drafty old building, you may be amazed to learn, and the dressing rooms were better suited to storing furs than warming human beings.

We all had chilblains and cold sores. All of us girls were longing to wear our cute spring frocks and to show our figures again, instead of being mummified in overcoats, galoshes, and scarves. I’d seen some of our dancers going out on the town with long underwear under their gowns—which they furtively took off in the bathrooms of nightclubs, and then just as furtively put back on again at the end of the evening, before braving the freezing night air. Believe me, there is nothing glamorous about a girl in a silk gown and long underwear. I’d been feverishly sewing new spring clothes for myself all winter—in the irrational hope that if my wardrobe was more summery, the weather would be, too.

Finally, toward the end of the month, the weather broke and the cold spell lifted a bit.

It was one of those bright, gladdening spring days in New York that tricks you into thinking that perhaps summer has come. I hadn’t been in the city long enough not to fall for the trick (never trust the month of March in New York!), and so I allowed myself to feel a burst of joy at the appearance of the sun.

It was a Monday. The theater was dark. I got an invitation in the morning mail for Edna. An organization called the Ladies British-American Protection Alliance was hosting a fund-raiser that night at the Waldorf. All proceeds would go toward lobbying efforts to convince the United States to enter the war.

Late notice as it was, the organizers wrote, would Mrs. Watson consider gracing the event with her presence? Her name would bring such prestige to the occasion. Furthermore, would Mrs. Watson be kind enough to ask her young costar Anthony Roccella if he would join her at the event? And would the pair consider singing their celebrated duet from City of Girls, for the entertainment of the ladies gathered?

I turned down most of Edna’s invitations without even running them by her. Her demanding performance schedule made most extracurricular socializing impossible, and right now the world wanted more of Edna’s energies than she had available to share. So I almost declined this invite, too. But then I gave it a second thought. If there was any cause that Edna cared about, it was the campaign to involve the United States in the war. Many nights, I had heard her talking with Olive about just that concern. And it looked like a modest enough request—a song, a dance, a supper. So I brought the invitation to her attention.

Edna instantly decided to attend. She’d been made so stir-crazy by the dreadful winter, she said, that she welcomed the chance to go out. And of course, she would do anything for poor England! Then she asked me to call Anthony and see if he would escort her to the benefit and sing their duet with her. Somewhat, but not entirely, to my surprise, he agreed. (Anthony could not have cared less about politics—he made even me look like Fiorello La Guardia by comparison—but he adored Edna. If I haven’t mentioned before that Anthony adored Edna, please do forgive me. It would become tedious if I had to keep up a thorough list of everyone who adored Edna Parker Watson. Just assume they all did.)

“Sure, baby, I’ll haul Edna over there,” he said. “We’ll have a gas.”

“Thank you awfully, darling,” Edna said to me, when I confirmed that Anthony would be her date for the evening. “Together we will defeat Hitler at last, and we’ll be back at home in time for bed, no less.”

—

That should have been the end of it.

This should have been a simple interaction—an innocent decision by two popular entertainers to attend an ultimately meaningless political event, hosted by a group of well-heeled, well-intentioned Manhattan women who could do absolutely nothing about winning the war in Europe.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Because as I was helping Edna to get dressed for the evening, her husband, Arthur, walked in. Arthur saw Edna putting herself together so smashingly, and asked where she was going. She told him she was dropping by the Waldorf to perform a song at a small political benefit that some ladies were putting together for England. Arthur got sulky. He reminded her that he’d wanted them to go see a movie that night. (“We only get one night off a week, blast it!”) She apologized (“But it’s for England, darling!”), and that seemed to be all there was to this little marital tiff.

But when Anthony showed up an hour later to pick up Edna, and Arthur saw the young man standing there in his tuxedo (rather overdressed, if I may say so), Arthur became angry again.

“What’s this one doing here?” he asked, eyeballing Anthony with naked suspicion.

“He’s escorting me to the event, darling,” said Edna.

“Why is he escorting you to the event?”

“Because he was invited, darling.”

“You didn’t say you were going on a date.”

“It’s not a date, darling. It’s an appearance. The ladies want Anthony and me to perform our duet for them.”

“Why don’t I get to go to the event, then, and perform a duet with you?”

“Darling, because we don’t have a duet.”

Anthony made the mistake of laughing at this, and Arthur spun around to face him again. “You think it’s funny to take a man’s wife to the Waldorf?”

Always the diplomat, Anthony cracked his gum and responded, “I think it’s kinda funny.”

Arthur looked like he might lunge at him, but Edna spryly leapt between the two men and placed a petite, well-manicured hand on her husband’s broad chest. “Arthur, darling, keep your wits. This is a professional engagement, and nothing more.”

“Professional, is it? Are you being paid?”

“Darling, it’s a benefit. Nobody is being paid.”

“It doesn’t benefit me!” Arthur cried, and Anthony—once more, with his native tact—laughed.

I asked, “Edna, would you like Anthony and me to wait outside?”

“Nah, I’m pretty comfortable right here, baby,” Anthony said.

“No, you may stay,” Edna said to both of us. “This is nothing of concern.” She turned again to her husband. The patient, loving face she’d been showing him thus far was now replaced by an icier expression. “Arthur, I’m attending this event and Anthony is escorting me. We shall sing our duet for some harmless, pewter-haired old ladies, raise a spot of money for England, and I’ll see you when I get home.”

“I’ve about reached my limit with this!” he cried. “It’s not enough that every newspaper in New York forgets I’m your husband, but now you forget it, too? You’re not going, I say. I refuse!”

“Get a load of this guy,” said Anthony helpfully.

“Get a load of you,” retorted Arthur. “You look like a waiter in that tuxedo!”

Anthony shrugged. “I am a waiter, sometimes. At least I don’t need my woman to buy my clothes for me.”

“You get out of here right now!” Arthur shouted at Anthony.

“No dice, pal. The lady invited me. She decides.”

“My wife goes nowhere without me!” said Arthur—somewhat ridiculously, because as I had witnessed over the past several months, she went to many places without him.

“You ain’t in charge of her, bud,” said Anthony.

“Anthony, please,” I said, moving forward and putting my hand on his arm. “Let’s step outside. There’s no reason for us to be involved in this.”

“And you ain’t in charge of me, sister,” Anthony said, shaking off my hand and throwing me a vicious look.

I recoiled as though I’d been kicked. He’d never snapped at me before.

Edna looked at each of us in turn.

“You’re all infants,” she pronounced mildly. Then she threw another rope of pearls around her neck, and collected her hat, her gloves, and her handbag. “Arthur, I’ll see you at ten o’clock.”

“No, you bloody well won’t!” he shouted. “I won’t be here! How will you like that, I wonder?”

She ignored him.

“Vivian, thank you for your assistance in dressing me,” she said. “Enjoy your evening off. Anthony, come.”

And Edna walked out with my boyfriend, leaving me alone with her husband—both of us shaken and cowed.

—

I honestly think that if Anthony had not snarled at me, I would have brushed off this entire incident, dismissing it as a meaningless squabble between Edna and her childish, jealous husband. I would have seen it for what it was: a problem that had nothing whatsoever to do with me. I probably would have left the room immediately and gone out for drinks with Peg and Billy.

But Anthony’s reaction had shocked me, and I was rooted where I stood. What had I done to deserve such vitriol? You ain’t in charge of me, sister! What had he meant by that? When had I ever tried to be in charge of Anthony? (Aside from constantly urging him to move to a new apartment, that is. And wanting him to dress and speak differently. And encouraging him to stop using so much slang. And asking him to style his hair in a more conservative manner. And trying to convince him to stop chewing gum all the time. And arguing with him whenever I saw him flirting with a dancer. But apart from that? Why, I gave the boy nothing but freedom.)

“That woman is destroying me,” Arthur said, a few moments after Edna and Anthony had left. “She is a destroyer of men.”

“I’m sorry?” I asked, once I’d found my voice.

“You should keep an eye on that greasy mutt of yours, if you like him. She’ll make a meal out of him. She likes them young.”

Again—if it hadn’t been for Anthony’s flare-up, I would not have paid attention to a word that Arthur Watson was saying. The world, as a collective habit, never paid attention to a word that Arthur Watson said. I should have known better.

“Oh, she wouldn’t . . .” I didn’t even know how to finish that sentence.

“Oh, yes she would,” said Arthur. “You can be sure of it. She always does. You can be sure of it. She already is, you blind little ninny.”

A cloud of black particles seemed to pass over my eyes.

Edna and Anthony?

I felt dizzy, and I reached for the chair behind me.

“I’m going out,” Arthur declared. “Where’s Celia?”

This question made no sense to me. What did Celia have to do with anything?

“Where’s Celia?” I repeated.

“Is she in your room?”

“Probably.”

“Let’s bloody well go get her, then. We’re clearing out of here. Come on, Vivian. Get your things.”

And what did I do?

I followed that fool.

And why did I follow that fool?

Because I was an idiotic child, Angela, and at that age, I would have followed a stop sign.

—

So this is how it ended up that I spent that beautiful false-spring evening going out on the town with Celia Ray and Arthur Watson.

But not only with Celia and Arthur, as it turned out. We also shared the night with Celia’s unlikely new pals—Brenda Frazier and Shipwreck Kelly.

Angela, you’ve probably never heard of Brenda Frazier and Shipwreck Kelly. At least I hope you haven’t. They got far too much attention as it was, back when they were young and famous. They were a celebrated couple for a few minutes back in 1941. Brenda was an heiress and a debutante; Shipwreck was a star football player. The tabloids followed them everywhere. Walter Winchell invented the obnoxious word “celebutante” to describe Brenda.

If you’re wondering what these sophisticates were doing hanging around my friend Celia Ray, so was I. But pretty soon into that evening, I figured it all out. Apparently New York’s most famous couple had seen City of Girls, loved it, and had adopted Celia as their little accessory—much the same way they bought convertible cars and diamond necklaces on a whim. Evidently, they’d been gamboling about with each other for weeks. I’d missed all this, of course, because I was so entangled with Anthony. But it seemed Celia had found herself some new best friends, when I wasn’t paying attention.

Not that I was jealous, of course.

I mean—not so’s you’d notice.

—

We drove around that evening in Shipwreck Kelly’s opulent, cream-colored, custom-made convertible Packard. Shipwreck drove, Brenda was in the passenger seat, and Arthur and Celia and I sat in the back. Celia was in the middle.

I disliked Brenda Frazier instantly. She was rumored to be the richest girl in the world—so just imagine how fascinating and intimidating I found that, will you? How does the richest girl in the world dress? I couldn’t stop staring at her, to try to figure it all out—captivated by her, even as I was actively disliking her.

Brenda was a very pretty brunette, dressed in a pile of mink, wearing on her hand a diamond engagement ring approximately the size of a suppository. Underneath all those dead minks was a fairly staggering amount of black taffeta and bows. It looked as though she were going to a ball, or had just come from one. She had an overpowdered white face and bright red lips. Her tresses were styled in lush billows, and she was wearing a little black tricorn hat with a simple veil (the kind of thing that Edna used to disparagingly call “Tiny Bird’s Nest Teetering Precariously on a Giant Mountain of Hair”). I didn’t exactly embrace her style, but I had to hand it to her: she sure looked rich. Brenda didn’t say much, but when she did speak, she had a starchy finishing school accent that grated on me. She kept trying to convince Shipwreck to put up the roof of the car, because the breeze was ruining her hairstyle. She didn’t seem like fun.

I didn’t like Shipwreck Kelly, either. I didn’t like his nickname, and I didn’t like his red, jowly cheeks. I didn’t like his boisterous teasing. He was the kind of man who slaps you on the back. I have never liked a backslapper.

I really didn’t like the fact that both Brenda and Shipwreck seemed to know Celia and Arthur so well. By which I mean—they seemed to know Celia and Arthur in tandem. As though Celia and Arthur were a couple. This was immediately evidenced by Shipwreck hollering to the backseat of the car: “You kids wanna go to that place in Harlem again?”

“We don’t want to go to Harlem tonight,” said Celia. “It’s too cold.”

“Well, you know what they say about the month of March!” said Arthur. “In like a lion, out like a lamp.”

Idiot.

I couldn’t help but notice that Arthur was in an awfully gladsome mood suddenly, with his arm securely around Celia.

Why did he have his arm securely around Celia?

What the hell was going on here?

“Let’s just go to the Street,” said Brenda. “I’m too cold to drive all the way to Harlem with the top down.”

She meant Fifty-second Street, which everyone knew. Swing Street. Jazz Central.

“Jimmy Ryan’s or the Famous Door? Or the Spotlite?” asked Shipwreck.

“The Spotlite,” said Celia. “Louis Prima’s playing.”

And so it was decided. We drove that ridiculously expensive car a mere eleven blocks—which gave everyone in midtown enough time to see us and to spread the news that Brenda Frazier and Shipwreck Kelly were heading toward Fifty-second Street in their convertible Packard, which meant that there were a number of photographers waiting to snap photos of us as soon as we stepped out onto the curb in front of the nightclub.

(That part, I must admit, I enjoyed.)

—

I was drunk in a matter of minutes. If you think waiters back then were quick to bring cocktails to girls like Celia and me, you should’ve seen how fast drinks landed in front of the likes of Brenda Frazier.

I hadn’t eaten dinner, and I was emotional from my fight with Anthony. (In my mind, it was the worst conflagration of modern times, and I’d been all but undone by it.) The alcohol went right to my head. The band was clobbering away, loud and hard. By the time Louis Prima came over to pay his respects to our table, I was blotto. I couldn’t have cared less about meeting Louis Prima.

“What’s going on between you and Arthur?” I asked Celia.

“Nothing that matters,” she said.

“Are you fooling around with him?”

She shrugged.

“Don’t you stonewall me, Celia!”

I watched her weigh her options, and then settle on the truth.

“Confidentially? Yeah. He’s a bum, but yeah.”

“But Celia, he’s married. He’s married to Edna.” I said this a little too loud, and several people—who cared who?—turned to look at us.

“Let’s go outside and get some air, just me and you,” Celia said.

Moments later, we were standing in the frigid March wind. I didn’t have a coat. This was not a warm spring day, after all. I’d even been duped by the weather. I’d been duped by everything.

“But what about Edna?” I asked.

“What about her?”

“She loves him.”

“She loves young bucks, anyhow. She always has one on the side. A new one for every play. That’s what he told me.”

Young bucks. Young bucks like Anthony.

Seeing my face, Celia said, “Think smart! You think that marriage of theirs is legit? You don’t think Edna is still in circulation? A big star like her, controlling all the money? Popular like she is? You think she sits around waiting for that hambone of hers to come home? I should hardly think so! It’s not like she won the sweepstakes with that guy, anyway, cute as he is. So he doesn’t sit around waiting for her, either. They’re continental, Vivvie. That’s how everyone does it over there.”

“Over where?” I asked.

“Europe” was her full answer, as she vaguely waved toward a huge and distant place where all the rules were different.

I felt shocked past all reason. For months, I had suffered from petty envy whenever Anthony flirted with the cute little dancers, but it had never occurred to me to be suspicious of Edna. Edna Parker Watson was my friend—and moreover, she was old. Why would she take my Anthony? Why would he take her? And what would happen now to my precious drumbeat of love? My mind bent in sickening twists of hurt and worry. How could I have been so far off the mark about Edna? And about Anthony? I’d never seen the faintest sign of it. And how had I not noticed that my friend was sleeping with Arthur Watson? Why hadn’t she told me earlier?

Then I had a flash of Peg and Olive dancing in the living room that night to “Stardust,” and remembered how shocked I’d been. What else did I not know? When would I stop being surprised by people and their lust, and their sordid secrets?

Edna had called me an infant.

I felt like one.

“Ah, Vivvie, don’t be a goose,” Celia said when she saw my face. She pulled me into her long arms for a hug. Just when I was about to collapse into her bosom and unleash a river of fretful, drunken, pathetic tears, I heard a familiar and annoying voice at my side.

“I thought I’d pay a call on you two,” said Arthur Watson. “If I’m going to squire two beauties like this around town, I can’t leave you unattended, now, can I?”

I started to pull away from Celia’s embrace, but Arthur said, “Say now, Vivian. No need to stop what you were doing just because I’m here.”

He put his arms around both of us at the same time. Now our embrace was completely contained within his. We were tall women, but Arthur was a large and athletic man—and he easily got the two of us in quite a strong clasp. Celia laughed, and Arthur laughed, too.

“That’s better,” he murmured into my hair. “Isn’t that better?”

In point of fact, something about it was better.

A good deal better.

For one thing, it was warm in their arms. I’d been freezing out there, standing on Fifty-second Street in the icy wind without a coat. The cold was pinching at my feet and hands. (Or maybe—poor me—all the blood had flowed to my lacerated, broken heart!) But now I was warm, or at least partially so. One side of me was pressed against Arthur’s monumentally dense body, and the front of me was glued to Celia’s outrageously soft chest. My face was pressed into her familiar-smelling neck. I felt her move, as she lifted her face to Arthur and began kissing him.

Once I realized that they were kissing, I made a tiny effort—merely out of propriety—to remove myself from their embrace. But only a tiny effort. It was awfully cozy in there, and they felt good.

“Vivvie is a sad little kitten tonight,” said Celia to Arthur, after they had kissed with considerable passion for a good long while, right in my ear.

“Who’s a sad little kitten?” said Arthur. “This one?”

And then he kissed me—without letting go of either of us.

Now, this was a peculiar line of conduct.

I’d kissed Celia’s boyfriends before, but not with her face an inch away from mine. And this wasn’t just any random boyfriend—this was Arthur Watson, whom I rather detested. And whose wife I very much loved. But whose wife was right now quite likely having sex with my boyfriend—and if Anthony were using his talented mouth right now, doing to Edna what he could do to me . . .

I couldn’t bear it.

I felt a sob rising in my throat. I pulled my mouth away from Arthur’s to catch my breath, and in the next instant, Celia’s lips were on mine.

“Now you’re getting the idea,” Arthur said.

In all my months of sensual adventures, I’d never yet kissed a girl—nor had I thought to. You’d think by this point in my journey I would have stopped being so easily surprised by the twists and vagaries of life—but Celia’s kiss astonished me. Then it kept on astonishing me, as she dug in only deeper.

My first impression was that kissing Celia felt like such a frightful extravagance. There was so much to her. So much softness. So much in the way of lips. So much in the way of heat. Everything about her was pillowy and absorbing. Between Celia’s enormously soft mouth, and the abundance of her breasts, and the familiar flowery smell of her—I felt subsumed by it all. It was nothing like kissing a man—not even like kissing Anthony, who knew how to kiss with rare tenderness. Even the gentlest kiss from a man would be rough compared to this experience with Celia’s lips. This was velvet quicksand. I could not pull myself away from this. Who in their right mind would want to?

For a dreamy thousand years or so, I stood there under that streetlamp, letting her kiss me, and kissing her back. Gazing into each other’s oh-so-beautiful and oh-so-similar eyes, kissing each other’s oh-so-lovely and oh-so-similar lips, Celia Ray and I had finally reached the absolute zenith of our complete and mutual narcissism.

Then Arthur broke the trance.

“All right girls, I hate to interrupt, but it’s time for us to nip on out of here and head to a nice hotel I know,” he said.

He was grinning like a man who’d just won the trifecta, which I suppose he had done.

—

It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, Angela.

I know that this would be a fantasy for many women—to find yourself in a big bed in a fancy hotel room with both a handsome man and a beautiful girl available for your enjoyment. But from a matter of sheer logistics, I quickly discovered that three people engaging in sexual exploits at the same time can be both a problematic and arduous situation. One never quite knows where to put one’s attention, you see. There are so many limbs to organize! There can be a great deal of: Oh, pardon me, I didn’t see you there. And just when you’re getting settled into something nice, somebody new shows up to interrupt you. One also never quite knows when it is over. Just when you think you’re done with your pleasure, you find that somebody out there isn’t yet done with theirs, and back you go, into the fray.

Then again, maybe this triad would have been more satisfying if the man in question hadn’t been Arthur Watson. He was practiced and vigorous in the sport of copulation, to be sure, but he was exactly as off-putting in bed as he was in the world—and for the same reasons. He was always looking at or thinking about himself, which was irritating. My sense was that Arthur had a deep and penetrating appreciation for his own physique, and thus he liked to arrange himself into tableaux that brought maximum attention to his own musculature and handsomeness. Never once did I get the feeling that he had stopped posing for us or admiring himself. (And imagine that ridiculousness, if you would! Imagine being in bed with the likes of Celia Ray and a twenty-year-old version of me—and not paying attention to anything but your own body! What a dumb man!)

As for Celia, I didn’t know what to do with her. She was too much for me to manage—volcanic in her raptures, and labyrinthine in the secrets of her needs. She was forked lightning. I felt like I’d never met her before. Yes, I’d been sleeping and cuddling with Celia in the same bed for almost a year—but this was a very different kind of bed, and a very different kind of Celia. This Celia was a country I’d never visited, a language I could not speak. I could not find my friend hidden anywhere in this dark stranger of a woman, whose eyes never opened, and whose body never stopped moving—driven, it seemed, by some ferocious sexual incubus that was equal parts fever and wrath.

In the midst of all this—in fact, right at the white-hot center of it—I had never felt more lost or lonely.

—

I must say, Angela, that I had almost backed out of this arrangement at the door of the hotel room. Almost. But then I’d remembered the promise I’d made to myself months ago—that I would never again excuse myself from participating in something dangerous that Celia Ray was doing.

If she were engaged in wildness, then I would be, too.

While this promise now seemed stale and even confusing to me (so much had changed in the past few months, so why did it even matter to me anymore, to keep up with my friend’s exploits?), I stuck with my vow anyway. I hung right in there. With no small amount of irony, I can say: consider it an expression of my immature honor.

I probably had other motives, as well.

I could still feel Anthony shoving my hand away from his arm, and saying that I wasn’t in charge of him. Calling me sister, in that contemptuous tone.

I could still hear Celia talking about Edna and Arthur’s marital arrangement—“They’re continental, Vivvie”—and looking at me as if I were the most naïve and pitiable creature she’d ever encountered in all her days.

I could still hear Edna’s voice, calling me an infant.

Who wants to be an infant?

So I proceeded. I rooted about that bed from one corner of the mattress to another—trying to be continental, trying not to be an infant—digging and pawing at Arthur and Celia’s Olympian bodies for proof of something necessary about myself.

But all the while, somewhere in the only remaining corner of my brain that was not drunk or sorrowful or lusty or stupid, I perceived with unblurred clarity that this decision was going to bring me nothing but grief.

And boy, was I right.

NINETEEN

What befell me next is quickly told.

Eventually our activities ended. Arthur and Celia and I immediately fell asleep—or passed out. Awhile later (I had lost track of time) I got up and put on my clothes. I left the two of them sleeping in the hotel room and ran the eleven blocks home, clutching at my shaking, underdressed body, trying and failing to stay warm despite the cruel March wind.

It was well after midnight when I opened the door to the third floor of the Lily Playhouse and rushed in.

Instantly, I could see that something was wrong.

First of all, every light in the place was blazing.

Secondly, people were there—and they were all staring at me.

Olive and Peg and Billy were sitting in the living room, surrounded by a cumulus cloud of dense cigarette and pipe smoke. With them was a man I didn’t recognize.

“There she is!” cried Olive, leaping up. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Peg. “It’s too late.” (This made no sense to me, but I didn’t pay the comment much mind. I could tell by her voice that Peg was very drunk, so I didn’t expect her to make sense. I was far more concerned about why Olive had been up waiting for me, and who was this strange man?)

“Hello,” I said. (Because what else do you say? Always helpful to start with the preliminaries.)

“We have an emergency, Vivian,” Olive said.

I could tell by how calm Olive was that something truly terrible had happened. She only became hysterical over insignificant matters. Whenever she was this composed, it had to be a real crisis.

I could only assume that somebody had died.

My parents? My brother? Anthony?

I stood there on my shaky legs, reeking of sex, waiting for the bottom to fall out of my world—which it subsequently did, but not in the manner I was expecting.

“This is Stan Weinberg,” said Olive, introducing me to the stranger. “He’s an old friend of Peg’s.”

Nice girl that I was, I made a polite move to approach the gentleman and shake his hand. But Mr. Weinberg blushed as he saw me nearing him, and turned his face away. His obvious discomfort at my presence stopped me in my tracks.

“Stan is an editor on the night desk at the Mirror,” Olive continued, in that same disconcertingly flat tone. “He came over a few hours ago with some bad news. Stan has offered us the courtesy of letting us know that Walter Winchell will be publishing an exposé tomorrow afternoon in his column.”

She looked at me plainly, as though that should explain everything.

“An exposé about what?” I asked.

“About what happened this evening between you and Arthur and Celia.”

“But . . .” I stammered around a bit, and then said, “But what did happen?”

I promise you, Angela, I was not being coy. For a moment, I truly didn’t know what had happened. It was as though I had just shown up on this scene—a stranger to myself, and a stranger to the story that was being told here. Who were these people, anyhow, that everyone was talking about? Arthur and Vivian and Celia? What did they have to do with me?

“Vivian, they’ve got photos.”

That sobered me up.

In a panic, I thought: There was a photographer in the hotel room?! But then I remembered the kisses that Celia and Arthur and I had shared on Fifty-second Street. Right underneath the streetlamp. Beautifully lit. In full view of the tabloid photographers who had been crawling outside the Spotlite earlier this evening, waiting for glimpses of Brenda Frazier and Shipwreck Kelly.

We must have given them quite a show.

That’s when I saw the large manila folder in Mr. Weinberg’s lap. Presumably, it contained these photos. Oh, God help me.

“We’ve been trying to figure out how to stop this from happening, Vivian,” said Olive.

“It can’t be stopped.” Billy spoke up for the first time—and proved by the slur in his voice that he, too, was drunk. “Edna is famous, and Arthur Watson is her husband. Which makes this news, girlie, fair and square. And what news it is! Here’s a man—a semistar, married to a real star—caught kissing what looks like two showgirls outside a nightclub. Then we see this man—this semistar, married to a real star—checking into a hotel with not one, but two women not his wife. It’s news, baby. Nothing this juicy can be stopped. Winchell dines out on this kind of ruin. Christ, that Winchell is a reptile! I can’t bear him. I’ve hated him since I knew him on the vaudeville circuit. I never should’ve let him come see our show. Oh, poor Edna.”

Edna. The sound of her name hurt me all the way down to my bowels.

“Does Edna know?” I asked.

“Yes, Vivian,” said Olive. “Edna knows. She was here when Stan arrived with the photos. She’s gone to bed now.”

I thought I might throw up. “And Anthony—?”

“He knows, too, Vivian. He’s gone home for the evening.”

Everyone knew. So there was no hope of salvation in any direction.

Olive went on, “But Anthony and Edna are the least of your worries right now, if I may say. You have a far bigger problem to contend with, Vivian. Stan has told us that you’ve been identified.”

“Identified?”

“Yes, identified. They know who you are, at the newspaper. Somebody at the nightclub recognized you. This means that your name—your full name—will be printed in Winchell’s column. My objective tonight is to stop that from happening.”

Desperately, I looked at Peg—for what, I could not have said. Maybe I wanted comfort or guidance from my aunt. But Peg was leaning back on the couch with her eyes closed. I wanted to go shake her, and beg her to take care of me, to save me.

“Can’t be stopped,” Peg slurred again.

Stan Weinberg nodded in agreement solemnly. He didn’t look up from his hands, which were clasped over the hideously innocuous manila folder. He looked like a man who operated a funeral parlor, trying to keep his dignity and reserve as he was surrounded by a collapsing, grieving family.

“We can’t stop Winchell from reporting on Arthur’s dalliance, no,” said Olive. “And of course he will gossip about Edna, because she’s a star. But Vivian is your niece, Peg. We cannot allow her name to be in the papers in a scandal like this. Her name is not necessary to the story. It would be ruinous for the poor girl’s life. If you would just call your people at the studio, Billy, and ask them to intervene . . .”

“I’ve told you ten times already that the studio can’t do anything about this,” Billy said. “First of all, this is New York gossip, not Hollywood gossip. They don’t have that kind of clout over here. And even if they could fix it, I can’t play that card. Who do you want me to call? Zanuck himself? Wake him up at this hour, and say, ‘Hey, Darryl—can you get my wife’s niece out of trouble?’ I might need a favor of my own from Zanuck someday. So, no, I’ve got no pull here. Stop being such a mother hen, Olive. Let the chips fall. It’ll be ugly for a few weeks, but it will pass. It always does. Everyone will survive it. Just a little squib in the papers. What do you care?”

“I’ll fix things, I promise,” I said, like an idiot.

“Can’t be fixed,” said Billy. “And maybe for now you should keep your mouth shut. You’ve done enough damage for one night, girlie.”

“Peg,” said Olive, walking over to the couch to shake my aunt awake. “Think. You must have an idea. You know people.”

But Peg just repeated, “Can’t be stopped.”

I found my way to a chair and sat down. I had done something very bad, and tomorrow it would be splashed across the gossip pages, and it could not be stopped. My family would know. My brother would know. Everyone I’d grown up with and gone to school with would know. All of New York City would know.

As Olive had said: my life would be ruined.

I hadn’t tended to my life very carefully thus far, to be sure, but I still cared about it enough that I didn’t want it ruined. No matter how recklessly I’d been behaving for the past year, I guess I’d always had a distant thought that someday I would probably clean myself up and become respectable again (that my “breeding” would kick in, as my brother had said). But this level of scandal, with this level of publicity, would preclude respectability forever.

And then there was Edna. She already knew. Here came another wave of nausea.

“How did Edna take it?” I dared to ask, in a hazardously shaky voice.

Olive looked at me with something like pity, but did not answer.

“How do you think she took it?” said Billy, who was not so pitying. “That woman’s tough as nails, but her heart is constructed of the more typically flimsy composite materials—so, yeah, she’s pretty broken up about it, Vivian. If it had been just one bimbo chomping at her husband’s face, she might have been able to handle it—but two? And one of those girls was you? So what do you think, Vivian? How do you think she feels?”

I put my hands over my face.

The best thing for me to do right now, I thought, would be to never have been born.

“You’re taking an awfully self-righteous position on this, William,” I heard Olive say in a low, warning voice. “For a man with your particular history.”

“Christ, how I hate that Winchell.” Billy ignored Olive’s comment. “And he hates me just as much. I think he would light a match to me if he thought he could get insurance money for it.”

“Just call the studio, Billy,” Olive pleaded again. “Just call them and ask them to intervene. They can do anything.”

“No the studio can’t do anything, Olive,” said Billy. “Not with something as red hot as this. This is 1941, not 1931. Nobody has that kind of weight anymore. Winchell’s got more power than the goddamn president. You and I can fight about this till next Christmas, but the answer will always be the same—I can’t do anything to help, and the studio can’t do anything to help, either.”

“Can’t be stopped,” said Peg again, and sighed—a deep, sickly sigh.

I rocked in the chair with my eyes closed, nauseated by self-disgust and alcohol.

—

Minutes passed, I guess. They always do.

When next I looked up, Olive was coming back into the room wearing her coat and hat and carrying her purse. I suppose she’d stepped out for a moment, but I hadn’t taken notice. Stan Weinberg had gone, leaving his horrible news behind like a stench. Peg was still slumped on the couch with her head knocked back against the upholstery, muttering something insensible every once in a while.

“Vivian,” said Olive, “I need you to go change into something more modest. Do it quickly, please. Put on one of those flowery dresses you brought with you from Clinton. And get yourself a coat and a hat. It’s cold out there. We’re going out. I don’t know when we’ll be back.”

“We’re going out?” Christ, would this night of horrors never end?

“We’re going to the Stork Club. I’m going to find Walter Winchell and talk to him about this myself.”

Billy laughed. “Olive’s going to the Stork Club! To demand an audience with the great Winchell! Ain’t that a tickle! I didn’t know you’d ever heard of the Stork Club, Olive! I would’ve guessed you thought it was a maternity ward!”

Olive ignored this, other than to say, “Don’t let Peg drink any more tonight, Billy, please. We will need her clearheadedness to help us manage all this mess, just as soon as we can get her back to her senses.”

“She can’t drink any more,” exclaimed Billy, waving to his wife’s prostrate form. “Look at her!”

“Vivian, hurry,” said Olive. “Go get ready. Remember—you are a modest girl, so dress like one. And tidy up your hair while you’re in there. Take off some of that makeup, too. Clean up as best you can. And wash your hands with a generous amount of soap. You smell like a brothel, and that won’t do.”

—

It’s incredible to me, Angela, to realize that so many people these days have forgotten Walter Winchell’s name. He was once the most powerful man in American media, and that made him one of the most powerful men in the world. He wrote about the rich and famous, to be sure, but he was just as rich and famous as they were. (More, in most cases.) He was loved by his audience and feared by his prey. He built up and tore down other people’s reputations at will—like a kid toying about with sandcastles. Some even claimed that Winchell was the reason FDR got reelected—because Winchell (who was passionate about America joining the war and defeating Hitler) outright commanded his followers to vote for Roosevelt. And millions obeyed.

Winchell had been famous for a long time by doing nothing more than selling dirt on people, and for being a pretty snappy writer. My grandmother and I used to read his columns together, of course. We hung on his every word. He knew everything about everyone. He had tentacles everywhere.

Back in 1941, the Stork Club was essentially Winchell’s office. The whole world knew this. I certainly knew it because I’d seen him there dozens of times when I was out on the town with Celia. I would see him holding court from the throne that was always reserved for him: Table 50. He could be found there every night between 11:00 P.M. and 5:00 A.M. This is where he did his dirty work. This is where the denizens of his kingdom would come slithering forth like Kublai Khan’s ambassadors, from every corner of the empire—to ask for favors, or to bring him the gossip he needed to feed the monstrous belly of his newspaper column.

Winchell liked to be around pretty showgirls (who doesn’t?), so Celia had sat at his table a few times. He knew her by name. They danced together often—I’d seen it. (No matter what else Billy said about him, the man was a good dancer.) But despite all the nights I’d been at the Stork, I’d never dared to go sit at Winchell’s table myself. For one thing, I wasn’t a showgirl, an actress, or an heiress, so I wouldn’t have been of interest to him. For another thing, the man scared me to death—and I didn’t even have a reason back then to be scared of him.

Well, I had a reason now.

—

Olive and I didn’t talk in the cab. I was too consumed by fear and shame to make conversation, and she was never one for casual chitchat. I will say that her demeanor toward me was not degrading. She was not giving me a dose of schoolmarm disapproval—although she had cause. No, Olive’s attitude that night was all business. She was a woman on a mission, and her focus was solely upon the task at hand. If I’d had my wits about me, I might have been touched and amazed that it was Olive—not Peg, or even Billy—who was putting her neck on the line for me. But I was too distraught to register this act of grace. All I could feel was doom.

The only thing Olive said to me as we were getting out of the taxi was, “I don’t want you saying a word to Winchell. Not a word. Be pretty and be quiet. That’s your only task. Follow me.”

When we reached the entrance to the Stork, we were stopped by two doormen whom I knew well. James and Nick. They knew me, too, although they didn’t realize it right away. They knew me as a glamour girl who was always hanging around Celia Ray, and that’s not even close to how I looked this evening. I wasn’t dressed to go dancing at the Stork. I wasn’t wearing an evening gown or furs, or jewels that I’d borrowed from Celia. On the contrary—as per Olive’s directions for sartorial modesty, which, thankfully, I’d had the good sense to obey—I was wearing the same simple frock I’d worn on the train to New York City all those many months ago. And I had on my good school coat. My face was scrubbed clean of makeup. I probably looked about fifteen years old.

What’s more, I was keeping a different sort of company that night (to say the least) than what the doormen were used to. Instead of being on the arm of the luscious showgirl Celia Ray, I was in the company of one Miss Olive Thompson—a dour lady in steel-rimmed spectacles and an old brown overcoat. She looked like a school librarian. She looked like a school librarian’s mother. We certainly did not look like the sort of guests who would elevate the tone of a place like the Stork, and so both James and Nick put up their hands to stop us, just as Olive was marching in.

“We need to see Mr. Winchell, please,” she announced, briskly. “It’s rather an emergency.”

“I’m sorry, madam, but the nightclub is full, and we are not accepting any more guests for the evening.”

He was lying, of course. If Celia and I had been trying to get in—dressed in all our glory—those doors would have flung open so fast they might have lost their hinges.

“Is Mr. Sherman Billingsley here this evening?” Olive asked, undeterred.

The doormen exchanged glances. What did this homely librarian know of Sherman Billingsley, the club’s owner?

Taking advantage of their hesitation, Olive pressed on.

“Please tell Mr. Billingsley that the manager of the Lily Playhouse has come to speak with Mr. Winchell, and that it’s a grave emergency. Tell him that I come on behalf of his good friend Peg Buell. We haven’t much time. It’s regarding the potential publication of these photographs.”

Olive reached into her unassuming plaid satchel and pulled out the ruination of my life—that manila folder. She handed it to the doormen. This was a bold tactic, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Nick took the folder, opened it, looked at the photos, and let out a low whistle. Then he looked from the photos to me, and back to the photos. Something changed in his face. Now he knew me.

He gave me a raised eyebrow and a lewd grin. He said, “We haven’t seen you around here in a while, Vivian. But now I see why. I guess you’ve been busy, huh?”

I seared in shame—while at the same time understanding: This is just the beginning of it.

“I will ask you to take care with how you speak to my niece, sir,” said Olive, in a voice so steely it could have drilled a hole through a bank safe.

My niece?

Since when did Olive call me her niece?

Nick apologized, cowed. But Olive wasn’t done. She said, “Young man, you can either bring us to see Mr. Billingsley—who will not appreciate your rude treatment of two people he essentially considers to be family members—or you can bring us directly to Mr. Winchell’s table. You will do one, or you will do the other, but I will not be leaving. My suggestion is that you bring us directly to Mr. Winchell’s table because that’s where I’ll be ending up this evening—regardless of what it takes me to get there, or who has to lose their job along the way for trying to stop me.”

It’s amazing how frightened young men will always be of dowdy, middle-aged women with stern voices—but it’s true: they are terrified of them. (Too much like their own mothers, or nuns, or Sunday-school teachers, I suppose. The trauma from those old scoldings and beatings must run very deep.)

James and Nick exchanged a glance, looked at Olive one more time, and then decided as one: Give the old bird whatever she wants.

We were delivered straight to Mr. Winchell’s table.

—

Olive sat down with the great man, but gestured at me to remain standing behind her. It was as though she were using her squatty little body as a shield between me and the world’s most dangerous newspaperman. Or maybe she just wanted to put me at a far enough remove from the conversation that I wouldn’t speak and ruin her strategy.

She pushed Winchell’s ashtray aside and placed the folder in front of him. “I’ve come to discuss these.”

Winchell opened the folder and fanned out the photos in front of him. For the first time, I could see the photos—though I wasn’t close enough to make out the details. But there it was. Two girls and a man, all entwined in each other. You didn’t need the details to understand what was going on.

He shrugged. “I’ve seen these. Already bought them. Can’t help you.”

“I know,” said Olive. “I understand you’ll be publishing them tomorrow in the afternoon edition.”

“Say, lady, who the hell are you, anyhow?”

“My name is Olive Thompson. I’m the manager of the Lily Playhouse.”

You could see the abacus of his mind doing a quick calculation, and then he landed on it. “That dump where City of Girls is playing,” he said, lighting a new cigarette off the still-burning ember of his last one.

“That’s correct,” confirmed Olive. (She took no issue with the word “dump” as applied to our theater—though, honestly, who could have debated it?)

“It’s a good show,” Winchell said. “I gave it a rave.”

He seemed to want credit for this, but Olive wasn’t the sort of woman to hand out free credit—not even in this situation, when she was essentially coming before Winchell on bended knee.

“Who’s the little rabbit hiding behind you?” he asked.

“She’s my niece.”

So I guess we were sticking to that story.

“A bit past her bedtime, ain’t it?” said Winchell, giving me the once-over.

I’d never been this close to him before, and I didn’t like it one bit. He was a tall and hawkish man in his midforties, with baby-smooth pink skin and a twitchy jaw. He was wearing a navy blue suit (pressed to lacerating creases), with a sky blue Oxford shirt, brown wingtips, and a snappy gray felt fedora. He was wealthy and powerful, and he looked wealthy and powerful. His hands never stopped fidgeting, but his eyes were disconcertingly still as he took me in. His was a predator’s stare. You might have said he was good-looking, if you could release your concerns about when he was going to eviscerate you.

A moment later, though, he had dropped his gaze from me. I’d failed to keep his interest. He’d quickly browsed me and analyzed me—female, young, unconnected, inconsequential—and then dismissed me as useless to his needs.

Olive tapped one of the photos in front of her. “The gentleman in these photographs is married to our star.”

“I know exactly who that guy is, lady. Arthur Watson. Talentless sop. Dumb as a bag of hair. Better at chasing girls than he is at acting, by the looks of this evidence. And he’s gonna take one hell of a pasting from his wife when she sees these photos.”

“She’s seen them already,” said Olive.

Now Winchell was openly irritated. “How’d you see them, is what I want to know. These pictures are my property. And what are you doing, showing them all over town? What are you—selling tickets to these pictures?”

Olive didn’t answer this, but just fixed Winchell with her firmest stare.

A waiter approached and asked if the ladies would like a drink.

“No thank you,” said Olive. “We’re temperates.” (A claim that would have been soundly refuted, had anyone been close enough to smell my breath.)

“If you’re asking me to kill the story, you can forget about it,” said Winchell. “It’s news, and I’m a newsman. If it’s true or interesting, I got no choice but to publish it. And this item here is both true and interesting. Edna Parker Watson’s husband, running around like that, with two loose women? What do you want me to do, lady? Look down at my shoes demurely while famous people make whoopee with showgirls right there in the middle of the Street? As everyone knows, I don’t like to publish items on married couples, but if people are gonna be this indiscreet about their indiscretions, whaddaya want me to do about it?”

Olive continued to level him with her iceberg stare. “I expect you to have some decency.”

“You know, you’re really something, lady. You don’t scare easy, do you? I’m beginning to piece you together. You work for Billy and Peg Buell.”

“That’s correct.”

“It’s a miracle that junky theater of yours is still operating. How do you keep your audience, year after year? Do you pay them to come? Bribe them?”

“We coerce them,” said Olive. “We coerce them by providing excellent entertainment, and they, in return, reward us by buying tickets.”

Winchell laughed, drummed his fingers on the table, and cocked his head. “I like you. Despite the fact that you work for that arrogant louse Billy Buell, I like you. You got some nerve. You could be a good secretary for me.”

“You already have an excellent secretary, sir, in the figure of Miss Rose Bigman—a woman whom I consider a friend. I doubt she’d appreciate you hiring me.”

Winchell laughed again. “You know more about everybody than I do!” Then his laughter vanished—never having reached his eyes. “Look, I got nothing for you, lady. Sorry about your star and her feelings, but I’m not killing the story.”

“I’m not asking you to kill the story.”

“Then whaddaya want from me? I already offered you a job. I already offered you a drink.”

“It is important that you do not print the name of this girl in your newspaper.” Olive pointed at one of the photographs again. And there I was—in a picture taken just a few hours (and a few centuries) earlier—with my head thrown back in rapture.

“Why shouldn’t I name that girl?”

“Because she’s an innocent.”

“Got a funny way of showing it.” There was that cold, wet laugh again.

“Nothing about this story is further served by putting this poor girl’s name in your newspaper,” said Olive. “The other people involved in this kerfuffle are public figures—an actor and a showgirl. They are known by name already to the general public. To be exposed to public scrutiny was the risk they took when they entered a life of show business. They will be hurt by your story, to be sure, but they’ll survive the wound. It all comes with the territory of fame. But this youngster here”—again, she tapped the photo of my ecstatic face—“is naught but a college girl, from a good family. She will be laid low by this. If you publish her name, you doom her future.”

“Wait a minute, is she this kid?” Winchell was pointing at me now. To have his finger aimed at me felt something like being singled out of a crowd by an executioner.

“That’s correct,” said Olive. “She’s my niece. She’s a nice young girl. She’s attending Vassar.”

(Here, Olive was reaching: I had been to Vassar, yes, but I don’t think anyone could accuse me of ever having attended Vassar.)

He was still staring at me. “Then why the hell ain’t you in school, kid?”

Right about then, I wished I were. My legs and my lungs felt about to collapse. I was never happier to keep my mouth shut. I tried to look as much as possible like a nice girl who was studying literature at a respectable college, and who was not drunk—a role for which I was uniquely ill-equipped that night.

“She’s just a visitor to the city,” said Olive. “She’s from a small town, from a nice family. She took up with some dubious company recently. It’s the sort of thing that happens all the time to nice young girls. She made a mistake, that’s all.”

“And you don’t want me sending her to the glue factory for it.”

“That’s correct. That’s what I’m asking you to consider. Print the story if you must—even print the photos. But leave an innocent young girl’s name out of the papers.”

Winchell riffled through the photos again. He pointed to a picture of me with my mouth devouring Celia’s face, and my arm wrapped—serpentlike—around Arthur Watson’s neck.

“Real innocent,” he pronounced.

“She was seduced,” said Olive. “She made a mistake. It could happen to any girl.”

“And how do you propose that I keep my wife and daughter in mink coats if I stop publishing gossip, just because innocent people make mistakes?”

“I like your daughter’s name,” I blurted out right then, without thinking.

The sound of my voice shocked me. I truly hadn’t planned to speak. It just came flying out of my mouth. My voice startled Winchell and Olive, too. Olive spun around and stared daggers at me while Winchell drew back a bit in puzzlement.

“How’s that?” he said.

“We don’t need to hear from you now, Vivian,” said Olive.

“Zip it,” Winchell said to Olive. “What’d you say, girl?”

“I like your daughter’s name,” I repeated, unable to break his stare. “Walda.”

“What do you know about my Walda?” he demanded.

If I’d had my wits about me, or if I’d been capable of making up an interesting story, I might have given a different answer—but as it was, all I could manage in my terrified state was the truth.

“I’ve always liked her name. You see, my brother’s name is Walter, just like yours. My grandmother’s father’s name was Walter, too. My grandmother was the one who named my brother. She wanted the name to carry on. She started listening to your radio broadcasts a long time ago because she liked your name. She read all your columns, too. We read them together, in the Graphic. Walter was my grandmother’s favorite name. She was so happy when you named your children Walter and Walda. She made my parents name me Vivian, because the letter V is half a W, and that was close to Walter. But after you named your daughter Walda, she said she wished that Walda were my name, too. It was a clever name, she said, and a good omen. We used to listen to you all the time on the Lucky Strike Dance Hour. She always liked your name. I wished my name was Walda, too. That would have made my grandmother happy.”

I was running out of steam—running out of tattered sentences—and also, what the hell was I talking about?

“Who invited that compendium?” Winchell joked, pointing at me again.

“You needn’t pay any mind to her,” said Olive. “She’s nervous.”

“I needn’t pay any mind to you, lady,” he said to Olive, and turned his chilling attention to me again. “I feel like I’ve seen you before, kid. You’ve been in this room before, haven’t you? You used to hang around with Celia Ray, didn’t you?”

I nodded, defeated. I could see Olive’s shoulders deflate.

“Yeah, I thought so. You come in here tonight, dressed all sweet and pretty like Little Mary Cotton Socks, but that’s not how I remember you. I’ve seen you up to all sorts of hanky-panky in this room. So I think it’s pretty rich—you trying to convince me that you’re a decent young lady. Listen, you two, I’m on to your racket. I know what you’re doing here—you’re campaigning me—and I hate like hell to be campaigned.” Then he pointed at Olive. “Only thing I can’t figure out is why you’re making all the effort to save this girl. Every soul in this club could testify that she’s no fainting virgin, and I know for a fact that she ain’t your niece. Hell, you’re not even from the same country. You don’t even talk the same.”

“She is my niece,” insisted Olive.

“Kid, are you this lady’s niece?” Winchell asked me directly.

I was terrified to lie to him, but equally terrified not to. My solution was to cry out, “I’m sorry!” and to burst into tears.

“Ack! You two are giving me a headache,” he said. But then he passed me his handkerchief and instructed, “Sit down, kid. You’re making me look bad. The only girls I ever want crying around me are showgirls and starlets whose hearts I just broke.”

He lit two cigarettes and offered me one. “Unless you’re temperate?” he said, with a cynical smile.

I gratefully took the cigarette and gulped down the smoke in a few deep, shaky breaths.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Twenty.”

“Old enough to know better. Not that they ever know better. Now, listen—you say you used to read me in the Graphic? You’re a little young for that, aren’t you?”

I nodded. “You were my grandmother’s favorite. She read your columns to me when I was little.”

“I was her favorite, was I? What’d she like about me? I mean, aside from my beautiful name, about which you’ve already given us quite a memorable monologue.”

This wasn’t a difficult question. I knew my grandmother’s tastes. “She liked your slang. She liked it when you called married people welded, instead of wedded. She liked the fights you picked. She liked your theater reviews. She said you really watched the shows, and cared about them, and that most critics don’t.”

“She said all that, your old grandma? Good for her. Where is this genius of a woman now?”

“She died,” I said, and I almost started crying again.

“Too bad. I hate losing a loyal reader. What about that brother of yours—the one they named after me. Walter. What’s his story?”

I don’t know how Walter Winchell had gotten the idea that my family had named my brother after him, but I wasn’t about to dispute it.

“My brother Walter is in the Navy, sir. He’s training to be an officer.”

“Signed up of his own accord?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “He dropped out of Princeton.”

“That’s what we need right now,” said Winchell. “More boys like that. More boys brave enough to volunteer to fight Hitler before somebody tells them they have to. Is he a good-looking kid?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Of course he is, with a name like that.”

The waiter came over to ask if we needed anything, and I came this close to ordering a gin fizz double, purely out of habit—but had the presence of mind to stop myself just in time. The waiter’s name was Louie. I’d kissed him before. He didn’t appear to recognize me, thank goodness.

“Look,” said Winchell. “I need you two to scram. You’re making this table look low rent. I don’t even know how you shoehorned yourselves in here in the first place, looking the way you do.”

“We will leave after I get an assurance from you that you won’t put Vivian’s name in the newspaper tomorrow,” said Olive, who always knew how to push people just a little bit further.

“Hey, you don’t come to Table 50 at the Stork Club and tell me what you need, lady,” snapped Winchell. “I don’t owe you anything. That’s the only assurance you’re getting.”

Then he turned to me. “I would tell you to keep your nose clean from now on, but I know you won’t. The indictment stands—you did a lousy thing, little girl, and you got caught. You’ve probably done a bunch of other lousy things, too, only you’ve been lucky so far not to get busted. Well, your luck ended tonight. Getting tangled up with somebody’s bum husband and a hot-to-trot lezzie—that’s no way for a girl from a good family to live. You’ll do more stupid things in the future, if I know people. So all I can tell you is this: if a so-called nice girl like you is gonna keep rummaging around with rough trade like Celia Ray, you’re gonna have to learn how to fight your own corner. This old hag here is a pain in my neck, but she’s got a lot of fortitude, going to bat for you like this. Not sure why she cares about you, or why you deserve it. But from now on, little girl, fight your own battles. Now get the hell out of here, you two, and stop ruining my night. You’re scaring away all the important people.”

TWENTY

The next day, I hid in my room for as long as I could. I kept waiting for Celia to come home so we could talk all this over, but she never showed up. I hadn’t slept and my nerves were a jangling nightmare. It was like I had thousands of doorbells attached to my brain, and they were all buzzing at the same time. I was too afraid of running into anyone—but most especially Edna—to risk going to the kitchen for breakfast, or for lunch.

In the afternoon, I slipped out of the theater to go buy the paper so I could read Winchell’s column. I opened it up right there at the newsstand, fighting the March wind that wanted to blow my bad news away.

There was the photo of Arthur and Celia and me, in our embrace. You could vaguely make out my profile, but there was no way to be sure it was me. (In low light, all pretty brunettes look the same.) Arthur’s and Celia’s faces, however, could be seen clear as day. They were the important ones, I suppose.

I swallowed hard, and made myself read it.

—

From Walter Winchell, in the New York Daily Mirror, afternoon edition, March 25, 1941:

Here’s some conduct ungentlemanly and improper from one “Mr. Edna Parker Watson.” How ’bout two American showgirls to keep you warm, you greedy limey, if one ain’t enough? . . . That’s right, we caught Arthur Watson pashing it outside the Spotlite with his

City of Girls

costar Celia Ray and another leggy denizen of Lesbos. . . . I call that a nice way to spend your time, mister, while your countrymen are fighting and dying against Hitler. . . . What a commotion out there on the sidewalk last night! . . . Let’s hope these three stupid cupids had fun playing for the cameras, because anyone with brains can see it: Here’s another showbiz marriage about to get Reno-vated! . . . Arthur Watson probably got a number nine spanking from his wife last night. . . . What a lousy day for the Watsons! They shoulda stood in bed! . . . That’s the word from the bird!

—

A leggy denizen of Lesbos.”

But no name.

Olive had saved me.

—

Around six that evening, there was a knock on my door. It was Peg, looking just as green and grisly as I felt.

She sat down on my clothes-strewn bed.

“Shit,” she said, and it sounded like she meant every word of it.

We sat in silence for a long while.

“Well, kiddo, you sure did foul things up,” she said at last.

“I’m so sorry, Peg.”

“Save it. I won’t queen it over you. But this sure has brought down trouble upon our heads—trouble of every variety. I’ve been up with Olive since dawn, trying to bring order to the wrack and ruin.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said again.

“You should really save it. You’ll need those sorries for other people. Don’t waste them on me. But we do have some items to discuss. First off, I want you to know that Celia has been fired.”

Fired! I’d never heard of anyone getting fired from the Lily.

“But where will she go?” I asked.

“She will go elsewhere. She’s done. She’s in the ash can. I told her to come get her things tonight while the show is on. I’m going to ask you not to be in this room when she arrives. I don’t want any further agitation.”

Celia was leaving and I wouldn’t even get a chance to say goodbye! But where was she going to? I knew for a fact that she didn’t have a dime to her name. Nowhere to stay. No family. She’d be laid to waste.

“I had to do it,” Peg said. “I wasn’t going to make Edna share the stage with that girl again. And if I didn’t get rid of Celia after this mess, we would’ve had a palace revolt from the rest of the cast. Everyone is too angry. We can’t risk that. So I’ve replaced Celia with Gladys. She’s not as good, but she’ll do fine. Wish I could fire Arthur, too, but Edna won’t have that. She may end up firing him herself down the line, but that’s her call. The man’s a bad hat—but what can you do? She loves him.”

“Is Edna going onstage tonight?” I asked, in wonder.

“Of course she is. Why wouldn’t she? She’s not the one who did anything wrong.”

I winced. But truly, I was shocked to hear she would be performing. I thought maybe Edna would be in hiding—checked into a sanatorium somewhere, or at least crying behind a locked door. I thought maybe the whole play would have been canceled.

“It won’t be a pleasant evening for her,” said Peg. “Everyone’s read Winchell, of course. There will be a lot of whispers. The audience will be staring at her with bloodlust, wanting to see her flounder and flail. But she’s a trouper, and she’ll face it. Better to get it over with, is her feeling. Show must go on, and all that. We’re lucky for her strength. If she wasn’t this resolute, or such a good friend, she probably would have quit the show—and then where would we be? Thankfully, she knows how to prevail—and she will.”

She lit a cigarette and went on: “I also had a talk today with your boyfriend, Anthony. He wanted to leave the show. Said he wasn’t having fun anymore. Said we were ‘bugging’ him, whatever that means. Specifically said that you are bugging him. I managed to convince him to stay, but we have to pay him more, and he stipulated he doesn’t want you ‘messing’ with him anymore. Because you ‘did him dirt.’ Says he’s done with you. Doesn’t even want to hear you ‘jawing’ at him. I’m just quoting here, Vivvie. I think I’ve conveyed the fullness of his message. I don’t know whether he’ll be able to put on a good show tonight, but we’ll find out soon enough. Olive had a long talk with him this morning, trying to keep the boy on track. It would be best if you steered clear of him. For now on, pretend he doesn’t exist.”

I felt like throwing up. Celia was banished. Anthony never wanted to talk to me again. And because of me, Edna would have to face an audience tonight that wanted to see her twist on a rope.

Peg said, “I’m going to ask it straight from the shoulder, Vivvie. How long have you been dallying around with Arthur Watson?”

“I haven’t been. It was just last night. It was just the one time.”

My aunt studied me, as though determining if that were true or not. Ultimately, she shrugged it off. She may have believed me, she may not have. Maybe she came to the conclusion that it didn’t matter, one way or another. As for me, I didn’t have the energy to fight my case. It wasn’t much of a case, anyhow.

“Why’d you do it?” Her tone was more puzzled than judgmental. When I didn’t answer right away, she said, “Never mind. People always do it for the same reason.”

“I thought Edna was fooling around with Anthony,” I said lamely.

“Well, that’s not true. I know Edna, and I can promise you it’s not true. She’s never operated that way, and never will. And even if it had been true—it’s not a good enough reason, Vivian.”

“I’m so sorry, Peg,” I said again.

“This story’s going to be picked up by every rag in town, you know. In every town. Variety will run it. All the tabloids in Hollywood. In London, too. Olive’s had reporters calling all afternoon, asking for statements. There are photographers at the stage door. Such a comedown for a woman like Edna—someone of her dignity.”

“Peg. Tell me what I can do. Please.”

“You can’t,” she said. “You can’t do anything other than be humble and keep your mouth shut, and hope everyone will be charitable with you. Meanwhile, I hear you and Olive went to the Stork last night.”

I nodded.

“I don’t mean to be melodramatic, Vivvie, but you do understand that Olive has saved you from ruin, don’t you?”

“I understand.”

“Can you imagine what your parents would say about this? In a community like yours? To have this sort of reputation? And with photos, to boot?”

I could imagine. I had imagined.

“It’s not entirely fair, Vivvie. Everyone else will have to take it on the chin—not least of all Edna—but you’re getting away with it, scot-free.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

Peg sighed. “Well. Once again, Olive saves the day. I’ve lost track of the number of times she’s rescued us—rescued me—over the years. She is the most remarkable and honorable woman I’ve ever known. I do hope you thanked her.”

“I did,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I had.

“I wish I’d gone with you and Olive last night, Vivvie. But apparently I wasn’t in good enough shape. I’ve been having too many nights like that, lately. Drinking gin like it’s soda water. I don’t even remember coming home. But let’s face it—it should’ve been me, petitioning Winchell on your behalf. Not Olive. I am your aunt, after all. Family duty. Would’ve been nice if Billy had lent a hand, as well, but you never can count on Billy to stick his neck out for anyone. Not that it was his responsibility. No, it was my job, and I dropped it. I feel sick about all this, kiddo. I should’ve been keeping a better eye on you all this time.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said, and I meant it. “It’s all my fault.”

“Well, there’s nothing to be done for it now. Looks like my bout with the bottle has run its course once more. It always ends the same way, you know, when Billy comes around, bringing the fun and the confetti. I always start out by having a big old time with him, and then one morning I wake up to learn that the world has gone smacko while I was blacked out, and meanwhile Olive’s been struggling to fix everything behind my back. I don’t know why I never can learn.”

I didn’t even know what to say to that.

“Well, try to keep up some spirits, Vivvie. It’s not the end of the world, as the man says. Hard to believe on a day like this, but it really isn’t the end of the world. There are worse things. Some people have no legs.”

“Am I fired?”

She laughed. “Fired from what? You don’t even have a job!” She looked at her watch and stood up. “One more thing. Edna doesn’t want to see you tonight before the show. Gladys will help dress her this evening. But Edna does wish to see you after the show. She’s asked me to tell you to meet her in her dressing room.”

“Oh, God, Peg,” I said. There was the nausea again.

“You’ll have to face her eventually. Might as well be now. She won’t be gentle with you, I dare say. But she deserves her chance to lay into you—and you deserve whatever’s coming. Go in there and apologize, if she’ll let you. Admit what you did. Take your lumps. The sooner you get flattened to the ground, the sooner you can begin to rebuild your life again. That’s always been my experience, anyway. Take it from an old pro.”

—

I stood in the back of the theater and watched the show from the shadows, where I belonged.

If the audience had come to the Lily Playhouse that night to watch Edna Parker Watson squirm in discomfort, then they left disappointed. Because she didn’t squirm for a moment. Pinned to the stage like a butterfly by that hot, white spotlight—scrutinized by hundreds of eyes, whispered about, giggled over—she played her role for all it was worth. Not a flinch of nerves did that woman reveal for the satisfaction of a bloodthirsty mob. Her Mrs. Alabaster was humorous, she was charming, she was relaxed. If anything, Edna moved across the stage that night with more economy and grace than ever. She carried herself with undented self-assurance, her face revealing nothing except how pleasant it was to be the star of this light, joyful show.

The rest of the company, on the other hand, was visibly squirrelly at first—missing their marks and stammering over their lines, until Edna’s steadfast performance eventually righted theirs. She was the gravitational force who kept everyone stabilized that night. What was stabilizing her, I could not tell you.

I don’t think it was my imagination that Anthony’s performance in the first act had an angrier edge to it than usual—he was less Lucky Bobby than Ferocious Bobby—but Edna managed to pull even him into line, eventually.

My friend Gladys—stepping into Celia’s role and Celia’s costume—looked perfectly good and danced without flaw. She lacked the comic, languid delivery that had made Celia such a hit. But she did the job ably, and that’s all that was needed.

Arthur was dreadful, but of course he was always dreadful. The only difference tonight was that he also looked dreadful. He had sickly gray circles under his eyes, and he spent most of his performance mopping sweat off the back of his neck, and staring at his wife across the stage with the most pathetic hound-dog eyes. He didn’t even try to pretend he wasn’t upset. The only saving grace was that his part had been so trimmed down that he didn’t have too many minutes onstage in which to ruin everything.

Edna made one significant alteration to the show that night. When she sang her ballad, she spontaneously changed the blocking. Instead of aiming her face and voice up to the heavens, which is how she usually did it, she took herself straight to the edge of the stage. She sang directly to the audience, peering out at them, picking people out of the crowd and singing to them—singing at them, really. She held eye contact, staring them down as she sang her heart out. Her voice was never richer, never more defiant. (“It’ll surely do me in this time / I’ll probably be left behind / But I’m considering falling in love.”)

The way she sang that night, it was as though she were challenging the audience, person by person. It was as if she were demanding: And you’ve never been hurt? And you’ve never had your heart broken? And you’ve never taken a risk for love?

By the end, she had them weeping—while she stood dry-eyed in their ovations.

To this day, I have never seen a mightier woman.

—

I knocked on the dressing-room door with a hand that felt, itself, like a piece of wood.

“Come in,” she said.

My head had a cottony feel. My ears were stuffed up and numbed. My mouth tasted like cigarette-flavored cornmeal. My eyes were dry and sore—both from lack of sleep and from crying. I had not eaten for twenty-four hours and I couldn’t imagine ever eating again. I was still wearing the same dress I’d worn to the Stork Club. My hair, I’d left unattended all day. (I hadn’t been able to confront a mirror.) My legs felt curiously unattached to the rest of my body; I didn’t understand how my legs knew how to walk. For a minute there, they didn’t. Then I pushed myself into the room like a person jumping off a cliff into the cold ocean below.

Edna was standing in front of her dressing-room mirror, haloed in its blazing lights. Her arms were folded, her posture relaxed. She’d been waiting for me. She was still in her costume—the showstopping evening gown I’d made for her finale so many months ago. Shimmering blue silk and rhinestones.

I stood before her, head bowed. I was a good foot taller than this woman—but at that moment, I was a rodent at her feet.

“Why don’t you speak first?” she said.

Well, I hadn’t exactly prepared any remarks. . . .

But her invitation was not really an invitation; it was a command. So I opened my mouth and began pouring out ragged, hapless, directionless sentences. Mine was a liturgy of excuses, contained within a flood of pathetic apologies. There were pleas to be forgiven. There were grasping offerings to make things better. But there was also cowardliness and denial. (“It was just the one time, Edna!”) And I’m very sorry to report that—at some point in my messy speech—I quoted Arthur Watson as having said of his wife, “She likes them young.”

I spun through all the stupid words I had, and Edna let me twist without interrupting or responding. Finally, I stuttered to a stop, coughing up my last bit of verbal trash. Then I stood silent once more, sickly under her blinkless gaze.

At last Edna said in a disturbingly mild tone, “The thing that you don’t understand about yourself, Vivian, is that you’re not an interesting person. You are pretty, yes—but that’s only because you are young. The prettiness will soon fade. But you will never be an interesting person. I’m telling you this, Vivian, because I believe you’ve been laboring under the misconception that you are interesting, or that your life has significance. But you are not, and it doesn’t. I once thought you had the potential to become an interesting person, but I was incorrect. Your Aunt Peg is an interesting person. Olive Thompson is an interesting person. I am an interesting person. But you are not an interesting person. Do you understand me?”

I nodded.

“What you are, Vivian, is a type of person. To be more specific, you are a type of woman. A tediously common type of a woman. Do you think I’ve not encountered your type before? Your sort will always be slinking around, playing your boring and vulgar little games, causing your boring and vulgar little problems. You are the type of woman who cannot be a friend to another woman, Vivian, because you will always be playing with toys that are not your own. A woman of your type often believes she is a person of significance because she can make trouble and spoil things for others. But she is neither important nor interesting.”

I opened my mouth to talk, ready to spurt out some more disconnected garbage, but Edna put up her hand. “You may want to consider preserving whatever dignity you have remaining to you, my dear, by not speaking anymore.”

The fact that she said this with a trace of a smile—even with the slightest hint of fondness—is what destroyed me.

“There’s something else you should know, Vivian. Your friend Celia spent so much time with you because she thought you were an aristocrat—but you’re not one. And you spent so much time with Celia because you thought she was a star—but she’s not one. She will never be a star, just as you will never be an aristocrat. The two of you are just a pair of dreadfully average girls. Types of girls. There are a million more just like you.”

I felt my heart collapsing down to its smallest possible dimension—until it became a crumpled cube of foil, crushed in her dainty fist.

“Would you like to know what you must do now, Vivian, in order to stop being a type of person—and become, instead, a real person?”

I must have nodded.

“Then I shall tell you. There is nothing you can do. No matter how hard you may try to gain substance throughout your life, it will never work. You will never be anything, Vivian. You will never be a person of the slightest significance.”

She smiled tenderly.

“And unless I miss my bet,” she concluded, “you’ll probably be going back home to your parents very soon now. Back to where you belong. Won’t you, darling?”

TWENTY-ONE

I spent the next hour in a small telephone booth in the back corner of a nearby all-night drugstore, trying to reach my brother.

I was berserk with distress.

I could have called Walter from the phone at the Lily, but I didn’t want anyone hearing me, and I was too ashamed to show my face around the playhouse, anyhow. So out to the drugstore I ran.

I had in my possession a general phone number for Walter’s OCS barracks on the Upper West Side. He’d given it to me in case of an emergency. Well, this was an emergency. But it was also eleven o’clock at night and nobody was picking up the phone. This didn’t deter me. I kept dropping my nickel into the slot, and listening to the phone ring endlessly on the other end. I would let the phone ring twenty-five times, then hang up and start over again with the same phone number and the same nickel. Sobbing and hiccupping all the while.

It became hypnotic—dialing, counting the rings, hanging up, hearing the nickel drop, putting the nickel back in the slot, dialing, counting the rings, hanging up. Sobbing, wailing.

Then suddenly there was a voice on the other end. A furious voice. “WHAT?!” someone was shouting in my ear. “Goddamn WHAT?!”

I almost dropped the phone. I’d fallen into such a trance, I’d forgotten what telephones are for.

“I need to talk to Walter Morris,” I said, when I recovered my senses. “Please, sir. It’s a family emergency.”

The man on the other end sputtered out a litany of curses (“You Christless, piss-soaked eight ball!”), as well as the expected lecture about do you have any idea what time it is? But his anger was no match for my desperation. I was doing an excellent rendition of a hysterical relative—which, in point of fact, is exactly what I was. My sobs easily overpowered this stranger’s outrage. His shouts about protocol meant nothing to me. Eventually he must’ve realized that his rules were no match for my mayhem, and he went searching for my brother.

I waited for a long while, dropping more nickels into the phone, trying to collect myself, listening to the sound of my own ragged breath in the little booth.

And then at last, Walter. “What happened, Vee?” he asked.

At the sound of my brother’s voice, I disintegrated all over again, into a thousand pieces of lost little girl. And then—through my waves of sobbing heaves—I told him absolutely everything.

“You have to get me out of here,” I begged, when he’d finally heard it all. “You have to take me home.”

—

I didn’t know how Walter managed to arrange it all so fast—and in the middle of the night, no less. I didn’t know how these things worked in the military—taking leave, and such. But my brother was the most resourceful person I knew, so he’d solved it somehow. I knew he would solve it. Walter could fix anything.

While Walter was pulling together his part of my escape plan (gaining leave and finding a car to borrow), I was packing—stuffing my clothes and shoes into my luggage, and putting away my sewing machine with shaking fingers. Then I wrote Peg and Olive a long, tear-stained, self-lacerating letter, and left it on the kitchen table. I don’t remember everything the letter said, but it was full of hysteria. In hindsight, I wish I’d just written, “Thank you for taking care of me, I’m sorry I was an idiot,” and left it at that. Peg and Olive had enough to deal with. They didn’t need a stupid twenty-page confessional from me, in addition to everything else.

But they got one, anyhow.

—

Just before dawn, Walter pulled up to the Lily Playhouse to collect me and to take me home.

He wasn’t alone. My brother had been able to borrow a car, yes, but it came with a catch. To be more specific, it came with a driver. There was a tall, skinny young man at the wheel, wearing the same uniform as Walter. An OCS classmate. An Italian-looking kid with a thick Brooklyn accent. He would be taking the drive with us. Apparently the beat-up old Ford was his.

I didn’t care. I didn’t care who was there, or who saw me in my fragmented state. All I felt was desperate. I just needed to leave the Lily Playhouse right now, before anybody there woke up and saw my face. I could not live in the same building as Edna, not for another minute. She had, in her own cool way, effectively commanded me to leave, and I had heard her loud and clear. I had to go.

Right now.

Just get me out of here was all I cared about.

—

We crossed the George Washington Bridge as the sun was coming up. I couldn’t even look at the view of New York City retreating behind me. I couldn’t bear it. Even though I was taking myself away from the city, I experienced the exact opposite sensation—that the city was being taken away from me. I’d proven that I couldn’t be trusted with it, so New York was being removed from my reach, the way you take a valuable object out of a child’s hands.

Once we were on the other side of the bridge, safely out of the city, Walter tore into me. I had never seen him so angry. He was not a guy to show his temper, but he damn sure showed it now. He let me know what a disgrace I was to the family name. He reminded me how much I’d been given in life and how recklessly I’d squandered it. He pointed out what a waste it had been for my parents to have invested any money whatsoever in my education and upbringing, when I was so unworthy of their gifts. He told me what happens to girls like me over time—that we get used, then we get used up, then we get thrown away. He said I was lucky not to be in jail, pregnant, or dead in the gutter, the way I’d been behaving. He said I’d never find a respectable husband now: who would have me, if they knew even part of my story? After all the mutts I had been with, I was now part mutt myself. He informed me that I must never tell our parents what I had done in New York, or what level of calamity I had caused. This was not to protect me (I didn’t deserve protection), but to protect them. Mother and Dad would never get over the blow, if they knew how degraded their daughter had become. He made it clear that this was the last time he would ever rescue me. He said, “You’re lucky I’m not taking you straight to reformatory school.”

All this he said right in front of the young man driving the car—as if the guy were invisible, deaf, or inconsequential.

Or as if I were so disgusting, Walter didn’t care who found out about it.

So Walter poured vitriol upon me, and our driver got to hear all the details, and I just sat there in the backseat and braved it out in silence. It was bad, yes. But I have to say, in comparison to my recent confrontation with Edna, it wasn’t that bad. (At least Walter was giving me the respect of being angry; Edna’s unshakable sangfroid had been so minimizing. I’d take his fire over her ice any day.)

What’s more, by this point, I was pretty much numb to all pain. I’d been awake for over thirty-six hours. In the past day and a half, I’d been drunk and screwed and scared and debased and dumped and reproached. I’d lost my best friend, my boyfriend, my community, my fun job, my self-respect, and New York City. I’d just been informed by Edna, a woman whom I loved and admired, that I was a nothing of a human being—and moreover that I would always be a nothing. I’d been forced to beg my older brother to save me, and to let him know what a shitheel I was. I’d been exposed, carved out, and thoroughly scoured. There wasn’t much more that Walter could say to add to my shame or to further wound me.

But—as it turns out—there was something our driver could say.

Because about an hour into the ride, when Walter had stopped lecturing me for just a moment (just to catch his breath, I guess), the skinny kid at the wheel spoke up for the first time. He said, “Must be pretty disappointing for a stand-up guy like you, Walt, to end up with a sister who’s such a dirty little whore.”

Now, that I felt.

Those words did more than just sting; they burned me all the way to the center of my being, as though I’d swallowed acid.

It’s not only that I couldn’t believe the kid said it; it’s that he said it right in front of my brother. Had he ever seen my brother? All six foot two inches of Walter Morris? All that muscle and command?

With my breath caught in my throat, I waited for Walter to deck this guy—or at the very least to reprimand him.

But Walter said nothing.

Apparently, my brother would let the indictment stand. Because he agreed.

As we drove on, those brutal words echoed and ricocheted throughout the small, enclosed space of the car—and through the even smaller, even more enclosed space of my mind.

Dirty little whore, dirty little whore, dirty little whore . . .

The words melted at last into an even more brutal silence that pooled around us all like dark water.

I closed my eyes and let it drown me.

—

My parents—who’d had no warning that we were coming—were at first overjoyed to see Walter, and then baffled and concerned by what he was doing there, and why he was with me. But Walter offered nothing much by means of explanation. He said that Vivian had gotten homesick, so he’d decided to drive her back upstate. He left it at that, and I added nothing to the story. We didn’t even make an effort at acting normal around our confused parents.

“But how long are you staying, Walter?” my mother wanted to know.

“Not even for dinner,” he answered. He had to turn right around and get back to the city, he explained, so he wouldn’t miss another day of training.

“And how long is Vivian staying?”

“Up to you,” said Walter, shrugging as if he couldn’t care less what happened to me, or where I stayed, or for how long.

In a different sort of family, more probing questions might have followed. But let me explain my culture of origin to you, Angela, in case you have never been around White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. You need to understand that we have only one central rule of engagement, and here it is:

This matter must never be spoken of again.

We WASPs can apply that rule to anything—from a moment of awkwardness at the dinner table to a relative’s suicide.

Asking no further questions is the song of my people.

So when my parents got the message that neither Walter nor I was going to share any information about this mysterious visit—this mysterious drop-off, really—they pursued the matter no further.

As for my brother, he deposited me in my house of birth, unpacked my belongings from the car, kissed my mother goodbye, shook my father’s hand, and—without saying another word to me—drove straight back to the city, to prepare for another, more important war.

TWENTY-TWO

What followed was a time of murky and contourless unhappiness.

Some engine within me had now stalled, and as a result I went limp. My actions had failed me, so I stopped taking action. Now that I was living at home, I allowed my parents to set my routine for me, and I dumbly went along with whatever they proposed.

I breakfasted with them over newspapers and coffee, and helped my mother make sandwiches for lunch. Dinner (cooked by our maid, of course) was at five thirty, followed by the reading of the evening papers, card games, and listening to the radio.

My father suggested that I work at his company, and I agreed to it. He put me in the front office, where I shuffled around papers for seven hours a day and answered phones when nobody else was free to do so. I learned how to file, more or less. I should have been arrested for impersonating a secretary, but at least it gave me something to do with the bulk of my days, and my father paid me a small salary for my “work.”

Dad and I drove to work together every morning, and we drove home together every evening. His conversation during those car rides was more like a collection of rants about how America needed to stay out of the war, and how FDR was a tool of the labor unions, and how the communists would soon be taking over our country. (Always more fearful of communists than fascists, was dear old Dad.) I heard his words, but I can’t say I was listening.

I felt distracted all the time. Something awful was clomping around inside my head in heavy shoes, always reminding me that I was a dirty little whore.

I felt the smallness of everything. My childhood bedroom with its little, girlish bed. The rafters that were too low. The tinny sound of my parents’ conversation in the mornings. The sparse number of cars in the church parking lot on Sundays. The old local grocery store with its limited collection of familiar foods. The luncheonette that closed at two o’clock in the afternoon. My closet full of adolescent clothing. My childhood dolls. It all cramped me, and filled me with gloom.

Every word coming out of the radio sounded ghostly and haunted to me. The uplifting songs and the sorrowful ones alike filled me with disheartenment. The radio dramas could barely hold my attention. Sometimes I would hear Walter Winchell’s voice on the air, bellowing out his gossip, or sending forth his urgent calls for intervention in Europe. My belly clenched at the sound of his voice, but my father would snap off the radio, saying, “That man won’t rest until every good American boy is sent overseas to be killed by the Huns!”

When our copy of Life magazine arrived in the middle of August, there was an article about the hit New York play City of Girls, that included photos of famed British actress Edna Parker Watson. She looked fantastic. For her primary portrait, she wore one of the suits I’d made for her the previous year—a deep gray number with a tiny, tucked waist and a fiercely chic bloodred taffeta collar. There was also a photo of Edna and Arthur walking through Central Park, hand in hand. (“Mrs. Watson, despite all her success, still praises marriage as her favorite role of all. ‘Many actresses will say that they are married to their work,’ says the stylish star. ‘But I prefer being married to a man, if given the choice!’”)

At the time, reading that article made my conscience feel like a rotting little rowboat sinking into a pond of mud. But thinking about it today, I have to say that it enrages me. Arthur Watson had completely gotten away with his misdeeds and lies. Celia had been banished by Peg, and I had been banished by Edna—but Arthur had been allowed to carry on with his lovely life and his lovely wife, as though nothing had ever happened.

The dirty little whores had been disposed of; the man was allowed to remain.

Of course, I didn’t recognize the hypocrisy back then.

But Lord, I recognize it now.

—

On Saturday nights, my parents and I went to our local country-club dances. I could see that what we had always so grandly called the “ballroom” was merely a medium-sized dining room with the tables pushed to one side. The musicians weren’t terrific, either. Meanwhile, I knew that down in New York City, the Viennese Roof was open for summer at the St. Regis, and I would never dance there again.

At the country-club dances, I talked to old friends and neighbors. I did my best. Some of them knew I’d been living in New York City and they tried to make conversation about it. (“I can’t imagine why people would want to live all boxed up on top of each other like that!”) I tried to make conversation with these people, too, about their lake houses, or their dahlias, or their coffee-cake recipes—or whatever seemed to matter to them. I couldn’t work out why anything mattered to anyone. The music dragged on. I danced with anyone who asked while noticing none of my partners with any specificity.

On weekends, my mother went to her horse shows. I went with her when she asked me to go. I would sit in the bleachers with cold hands and muddy boots, watching the horses go round and round the ring, and wondering why anybody would want to do that with their time.

My mother got regular letters from Walter, who was now stationed on an aircraft carrier out of Norfolk, Virginia. He said the food was better than you’d expect, and that he was getting along with all the guys. He sent best wishes to his friends back home. He never mentioned my name.

There was a rather headachy number of weddings to attend that spring, as well. Girls whom I’d gone to school with were getting married and pregnant—and in that order, too, can you imagine? I ran into a childhood friend of mine one day on the sidewalk. Her name was Bess Farmer, and she’d also gone to Emma Willard. She already had a one-year-old child whom she was pushing in a pram and she was pregnant again. Bess was a sweetheart—a genuinely intelligent girl with a hearty laugh and a talent for swimming. She’d been quite gifted in the sciences. It would be insulting and demeaning to say of Bess that she was nothing but a housewife now. But seeing her pregnant body gave me the sweats.

Girls whom I used to swim with naked in the creeks behind our houses back when we were all children (so skinny and energetic and sexless) were now plump matrons, leaking breast milk, bursting with babies. I couldn’t fathom it.

But Bess looked happy.

As for me, I was a dirty little whore.

I had done such a rotten thing to Edna Parker Watson. To betray a person who has helped you and been kind to you—this is the furthest reach of shame.

I walked through more agitated days, and slept fitfully through even worse nights.

I did everything I was told to do, and caused no trouble to anyone, but I still could not solve the problem of how to bear myself.

—

I met Jim Larsen through my father.

Jim was a serious, respectable, twenty-seven-year-old man who worked for Dad’s mining company. He was a freight clerk. If you want to know what that means, it means that he was in charge of manifests, invoices, and orders. He also managed outgoing shipments. He was good at mathematics, and he used his skill with numbers to handle the complexities of route rates, storage costs, and the tracking of freight. (I just wrote down all those words, Angela, but I myself am not sure what any of them actually mean. I memorized those sentences back when I was courting Jim Larsen so that I could explain his job to people.)

My father thought highly of Jim despite his humble roots. My father saw Jim as a purposeful young man on the rise—a sort of working-class version of his own son. He liked that Jim had started out as a machinist, but through steadfastness and merit had quickly worked his way up to a position of authority. My father intended to make Jim the general manager of his entire operation one day, saying, “That boy is a better accountant than most of my accountants, and he’s a better foreman than most of my foremen.”

Dad said, “Jim Larsen is not a leader, but he’s the reliable sort of man that a leader wants to have beside him.”

Jim was so polite, he asked my father if he could take me out on a date before he’d ever spoken to me. My father agreed. In fact, it was my father who told me that Jim Larsen would be taking me on a date. This was before I even knew who Jim Larsen was. But the two men had already worked it all out without consulting me, so I just went along with their plan.

—

On our first date, Jim took me out for a sundae at the local fountain shop. He watched me carefully as I ate it, to check that I was satisfied. He cared about my satisfaction, which is something. Not every man is like that.

The next weekend, he drove me to the lake, where we walked around and looked at ducks.

The weekend after that, we went to a small county fair, and he bought me a little painting of a sunflower after I’d admired it. (“For you to hang on your wall,” he said.)

I’m making him sound more boring than he was.

No, I’m not.

Jim was such a nice man. I had to give him that. (But be careful here, Angela: whenever a woman says about her suitor, “He’s such a nice man,” you can be sure she is not in love.) But Jim was nice. And to be fair, he was more than merely nice. He possessed deep mathematical intelligence, honesty, and resourcefulness. He was not shrewd, but he was smart. And he was good-looking in what they call the “all-American” way—sandy-haired, blue-eyed, and fit. Blond and sincere is not how I prefer my men, given a choice, but there was certainly nothing wrong with his face. Any woman would have identified him as handsome.

Help me! I’m trying to describe him, and I can barely remember him.

What else can I tell you about Jim Larsen? He could play the banjo and he sang in the church choir. He worked part time as a census taker and was a volunteer fireman. He could fix anything, from a screen door to the industrial tracks at the hematite mine.

Jim drove a Buick—a Buick that would someday be traded in for a Cadillac, but not before he had earned it, and not before he had first purchased a bigger home for his mother, with whom he lived. Jim’s sainted mother was a forlorn widow who smelled of medicinal balms and who kept her Bible tucked by her side at all times. She spent her days peering out the windows at her neighbors, waiting for them to slip up and sin. Jim instructed me to call her “Mother,” and so I did, even though I never felt comfortable around the woman for a moment.

Jim’s father had been dead for years, so Jim had been taking care of his mother since he was in high school. His father was a Norwegian immigrant, a blacksmith who had not so much sired a son as forged him—shaping this boy into somebody unerringly responsible and decent. He’d done a good job making this kid into a man by a young age. And then the father had died, leaving his son to become a full adult at the age of fourteen.

Jim seemed to like me. He thought I was funny. He’d not been exposed to much irony in his life, but my little jokes and jabs amused him.

After a few weeks of courtship, he began kissing me. That was pleasant, but he did not take further liberties with my body. I didn’t ask for anything more, either. I didn’t reach for him in a hungry way, but only because I felt no hunger for him. I felt no hunger for anything anymore. I had no access anymore to my appetites. It was as if all my passion and my urges were stored up in a locker somewhere else—somewhere very far away. Maybe at Grand Central Station. All I could do was go along with whatever Jim was doing. Whatever he wanted was fine.

He was solicitous. He asked if I was comfortable with various temperatures in various rooms. He affectionately started calling me “Vee”—but only after asking permission to give me a nickname. (It made me uncomfortable that he inadvertently settled on the same nickname my brother had always called me, but I said nothing, and allowed it.) He helped my mother repair a broken horse jump, and she appreciated him for it. He helped my father transplant some rosebushes.

Jim started coming around in the evenings to play cards with my family. It was not unpleasant. His visits provided a nice break from listening to the radio or reading the evening papers. I was aware that my parents were breaking a social taboo on my behalf—namely: consorting with an employee in their home. But they received him graciously. There was something warm and safe about those evenings.

My father came to like him more and more.

“That Jim Larsen,” he would say, “has the best head on his shoulders in this whole town.”

As for my mother, she probably wished that Jim had more social standing, but what could you do? My mother herself had married neither above nor below her class, but at exact eye level to it—finding in my father a man of the same age, education, wealth, and breeding as herself. I’m sure she wished I would do the same. But she accepted Jim, and for my mother, acceptance would always have to be a stand-in for enthusiasm.

Jim wasn’t dashing, but he could be romantic in his own way. One day when we were driving around town, he said, “With you in my car, I feel that I am the envy of all eyes.”

Where did he come up with a line like that? I wonder. That was sweet, wasn’t it?

Next thing you know, we were engaged.

—

I don’t know why I agreed to marry Jim Larsen, Angela.

No, that’s not true.

I do know why I agreed to marry Jim Larsen—because I felt sordid and vile, and he was clean and honorable. I thought maybe I could erase my bad deeds with his good name. (A strategy that has never worked for anyone, by the way—not that people don’t keep trying it.)

And I liked Jim, in some ways. I liked him because he wasn’t like anybody from the previous year. He didn’t remind me of New York City. He didn’t remind me of the Stork Club, or Harlem, or a smoky bar down in Greenwich Village. He didn’t remind me of Billy Buell, or Celia Ray, or Edna Parker Watson. He damn sure didn’t remind me of Anthony Roccella. (Sigh.) Best of all, he didn’t remind me of myself—a dirty little whore.

When I spent time with Jim, I could be just who I was pretending to be—a nice girl who worked in her father’s office, and who had no past history worth mentioning. All I had to do was follow Jim’s lead and act like him, and I became the last person in the world I had to think about—and that’s exactly how I wanted it.

And so I slid toward marriage, like a car sliding off the road on a scree of loose gravel.

—

By now, it was the autumn of 1941. Our plan was to get married the following spring, when Jim would have enough money saved to buy us a house we could share comfortably with his mother. He had purchased a small engagement ring that was pretty enough, but that made my hand look like a stranger’s.

Now that we were engaged, our sensual activities escalated. Now when we parked the Buick out by the lake, he would take off my shirt, and delight himself with my breasts—making sure at every turn, of course, that I was comfortable with this arrangement. We would lie together across that big backseat and grind against each other—or, rather, he would grind against me, and I would allow it. (I didn’t dare to be so forward as to grind back. I also didn’t really want to grind back.)

“Oh, Vee,” he would say, with simple rapture. “You are the prettiest girl in the whole wide world.”

Then one night the grinding got more heated, until he pulled back from me with considerable effort and scrubbed his hands over his face, collecting himself.

“I don’t want to do anything more with you until we’re married,” he said, once he could speak again.

I was lying there with my skirt up around my waist, and my breasts naked to the cool autumn air. I could sense that his pulse was racing wildly, but mine was not.

“I would never be able to look your father in the face if I took your virginity before you were my wife,” he said.

I gasped. It was an honest and unfettered reaction. I audibly gasped. Just the mention of the word “virginity” gave me a shock. I hadn’t thought of this! Even though I had been playing the role of an unsullied girl, I hadn’t thought he truly imagined I was one, all the way through. But why wouldn’t he have imagined it? What sign had I ever given him that I was anything less than pure?

This was a problem. He would know. We were getting married, and he would want to take me on our wedding night—and then he would know. The moment we had sex for the first time, he would know that he was not my first visitor.

“What is it, Vee?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

Angela, I was not one for telling the truth back then. Truth telling was not my first instinct in any situation—especially in stressful situations. It took me many years to become an honest person, and I know why: because the truth is often terrifying. Once you introduce truth into a room, the room may never be the same again.

Nonetheless, I said it.

“I’m not a virgin, Jim.”

I don’t know why I said it. Maybe because I was panicking. Maybe because I wasn’t smart enough to make up a plausible lie. Or maybe because there’s only so long a person can endure wearing a mask of falseness before a trace of one’s true self starts to gleam through.

He stared at me for a long while before asking, “What do you mean by that?”

Jesus Christ, what did he think I meant by it?

“I’m not a virgin, Jim,” I repeated—as though the problem had been that he hadn’t heard me correctly the first time.

He sat up and stared ahead for a long time, collecting himself.

Quietly, I put my shirt back on. This is not the sort of conversation that you want to be having while your boobs are hanging out.

“Why?” he asked finally, his face hard with pain and betrayal. “Why aren’t you a virgin, Vee?”

That’s when I started crying.

—

Angela, I must pause here for a moment to tell you something.

I am an old woman now. As such, I have reached an age where I cannot stand the tears of young girls. It exasperates me to no end. I especially cannot stand the tears of pretty young girls—pretty young affluent girls, worst of all—who have never had to struggle or work for anything in their lives, and who thus fall apart at the slightest disturbance. When I see pretty young girls crying at the drop of a hat these days, it makes me want to strangle them.

But falling apart is something that all pretty young girls seem to know how to do instinctively—and they do it because it works. It works for the same reason that an octopus is able to escape in a cloud of ink: because tears provide a distracting screen. Buckets of tears can divert difficult conversations and alter the flow of natural consequences. The reason for this is that most people (men especially) hate to see a pretty young girl crying, and they will automatically rush to comfort her—forgetting what they were talking about only a moment before. At the very least, a thick showering of tears can create a pause—and in that pause, a pretty young girl can buy herself some time.

I want you to know, Angela, that there came a point in my life when I stopped doing this—when I stopped responding to life’s challenges with floods of tears. Because really, there is no dignity in it. These days, I am the sort of tough-skinned old battle-ax who would rather stand dry-eyed and undefended in the most hostile underbrush of truth than degrade herself and everyone else by collapsing into a swamp of manipulative tears.

But in the autumn of 1941, I had not yet become that woman.

So I wept and wept, in the backseat of Jim Larsen’s Buick—the prettiest and most copious tears you ever saw.

“What is it, Vee?” Jim’s voice betrayed an undertow of desperation. He had never before seen me cry. Instantly, his attention turned from his own shock to my care. “Why are you crying, dear?”

His solicitousness only made me sob harder.

He was so good, and I was such trash!

He gathered me in his arms, begging me to stop. And because I could not speak in that moment, and because I could not stop crying, he just went right ahead and made up a story for himself about why I was not a virgin.

He said, “Somebody did something horrible to you, didn’t they, Vee? Somebody in New York City?”

Well, Jim, lots of people did lots of things to me in New York City—but I can’t say that any of it was particularly horrible.

That would have been the correct and honest answer. But I couldn’t very well give that answer, so I said nothing, and just sobbed away in his competent arms—my heaving voicelessness giving him plenty of time to embellish his own details.

“That’s why you came home from the city, isn’t it?” he said, as though it were all dawning on him now. “Because somebody violated you, didn’t they? That’s why you’re always so meek. Oh, Vee. You poor, poor girl.”

I heaved some more.

“Just nod if it’s true,” he said.

Oh, Jesus. How do you get out of this one?

You don’t. You can’t get out of this one. Unless you’re able to be honest, which of course I could not do. By admitting that I wasn’t a virgin, I had already played my one card of truthfulness for the year; I didn’t have another one in the deck. His story was preferable, anyway.

God forgive me, I nodded.

(I know. It was awful of me. And it feels just as awful for me to write that sentence as it did for you to read it. But I didn’t come here to lie to you, Angela. I want you to know exactly who I was back then—and that’s what happened.)

“I won’t make you talk about it,” he said, petting my head and staring off into the middle distance.

I nodded through my tears: Yes, please don’t make me talk about it.

If anything, he seemed relieved not to hear the details.

He held me for a long time, until my crying had subsided. Then he smiled at me valiantly (if a little shakily) and said, “It’s all going to be all right, Vee. You’re safe now. I want you to know that I will never treat you like you are tainted. And you needn’t worry—I’ll never tell anyone. I love you, Vee. I will marry you despite this.”

His words were noble, but his face said: Somehow I will learn to bear this repugnant hunk of awfulness.

“I love you, too, Jim,” I lied, and I kissed him with something that might have been interpreted as gratitude and relief.

But if you would like to know when—in all my years of life—I felt the most sordid and vile, it was right then.

—

Winter came.

The days got shorter and colder. My commute to work with my father was executed both morning and night in pitch darkness.

I was working on knitting Jim a sweater for Christmas. I had not unpacked my sewing machine since returning home nine months earlier—even looking at its case made me feel sad and grim—but I had recently taken up knitting. I was good with my hands, and handling the thick wool came easily. I’d ordered a pattern through the mail for a classic Norwegian sweater—blue and white, with a snowflake pattern—and I worked on it whenever I was alone. Jim was proud of his Norwegian heritage, and I thought he might like a gift that reminded him of his father’s country. In making this sweater, I pushed myself to the same level of excellence my grandmother would have demanded of me, ripping back whole rows of stitches when they were not perfect, and trying them again and again. It would be my first sweater, yes, but its excellence would be beyond reproach.

Other than that, I was doing nothing with myself but going where I was told, filing whatever needed to be filed (more or less alphabetically), and doing whatever anyone else did.

It was a Sunday. Jim and I had gone to church together, and then we went off to see a matinee of Dumbo. When we came out of the movie theater, the news was already all over town: The Japanese had just attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbor.

By the next day, we were at war.

—

Jim didn’t need to enlist.

He could have dodged the war for so many reasons. For one thing, he was old enough that the draft would not necessarily have caught him. For another, he was the sole financial provider of a widowed mother. And lastly, he worked in a position of authority at the hematite mine, which was an industry essential to the war effort. There would have been deferments available in all directions, should he have wished to reach for them.

But you can’t be a man with the constitution of Jim Larsen and let other boys go to war on your behalf. That’s not how he was forged. And on December 9, he sat me down for a conversation about it. We were alone at Jim’s house—his mother was at lunch with her sister in another town—and he asked if he could have a serious talk. He was determined to join up, he said. This was his duty, he said. He would never be able to live with himself if he didn’t help his country in its hour of need, he said.

I think he expected me to try to talk him out of it, but I didn’t.

“I understand,” I said.

“And there’s something else we should discuss.” Jim took a deep breath. “I don’t want to upset you, Vee. But I’ve given the matter a great deal of thought. Given the circumstances of the war, I think we should cancel our engagement.”

Again, he looked at me carefully, waiting for me to protest.

“Go on,” I said.

“I can’t ask you to wait for me, Vee. It’s not right. I don’t know how long this war will last, or what will become of me. I could come back injured, or not come back at all. You’re a young girl. You shouldn’t put your life away on my account.”

Now, let me point out a few things here.

For one thing, I wasn’t a young girl. I was twenty-one—which by the standards of the day practically made me a crone. (Back in 1941, it was no joke for a twenty-one-year-old woman to lose her wedding engagement, believe me.) For another thing, a lot of young couples across America that week were in exactly the straits as Jim and I. Millions of American boys were shipping off to war in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. Vast numbers of them, though, hastened to get married before they departed. Some of this rush to the altar surely had to do with romance, or with fear, or with the desire to have sex before facing possible death. Or maybe it was driven by an anxiety about pregnancy, for couples who’d already begun having sex. Some of it probably had to do with an urgent push to pack as much life as possible into a short amount of time. (Your father, Angela, was one of the many young American men who sealed himself up in swift matrimony to his neighborhood sweetheart before being thrown into battle. But of course you would know that.)

And there were millions of American girls eager to nail down their sweethearts before the war took all the boys away. There were even girls who angled to marry soldiers whom they barely knew, anticipating that the boy might be killed in battle and his widow would receive a ten-thousand-dollar allotment for his death. (These kinds of girls were called “Allotment Annies”—and when I heard about them, I felt some relief in knowing that there were actually worse people out there than me.)

What I’m saying is this: the general trend among people in these circumstances was to hurry up and get married already—not to call off their damn engagements. All over America that week, dreamy-eyed boys and girls were following the same romantic script, saying, “I’ll always love you! I’ll prove my love by marrying you right now! I’ll love you forever, come what may!”

This isn’t what Jim was saying, though. He wasn’t following the script. And neither was I.

I asked, “Would you like your ring back, Jim?”

Unless I was dreaming—and I do not believe I was dreaming—an expression of enormous relief flickered across his face. In that moment, I knew what I was seeing. I was seeing a man who’d just realized he had an out—that he did not have to marry the frighteningly tainted girl now. And he could keep his honor. He looked so nakedly grateful. The reaction lasted only for an instant, but I saw it.

Then he pulled himself back together. “You know I will always love you, Vee.”

“And I will always love you, too, Jim,” I dutifully replied.

Now we were back on script.

I slid that ring off my finger and placed it firmly in his waiting palm. I do believe to this day that it felt just as good for him to get that ring back as it felt for me to shed it.

And thus we were saved from each other.

You see, Angela, history is not so busy shaping nations that it cannot take the time to shape the lives of two insignificant people. Among the many revisions and transformations that the Second World War would bring to the planet was this tiny plot twist: Jim Larsen and Vivian Morris were mercifully spared from matrimony.

—

An hour after we had broken off our engagement, the two of us were having the most outrageous, memorable, backbreaking sex you could ever imagine.

I suppose I had initiated it.

All right, I’ll admit it: categorically, I had initiated it.

Once I’d returned the ring, Jim had offered me a tender kiss and a warm embrace. There’s a way that a man can hold a woman that says, “I don’t want to hurt your gentle feelings, darling,” and that’s how he was holding me. But my gentle feelings had not been hurt. If anything, it felt like a cork had been yanked from my skull and I was now exploding with an intoxicating rush of freedom. Jim was going to be gone—and of his own volition, better still! I would come out of this situation looking blameless, and so would he. (But more important: me!) The threat had been lifted. There was nothing more to be pretended, nothing more to be disguised. From this moment onward—ring off my hand, engagement canceled, reputation intact—I had nothing more to lose.

He gave me another one of those tender “I’m sorry if you’re hurting, baby” kisses, and I don’t mind saying that I responded by sticking my tongue so far down that man’s throat, it’s a miracle I didn’t lick the bottommost quadrant of his heart.

Now, Jim was a good man. He was a churchgoing man. He was a respectful man. But he was still a man—and once I switched that toggle over to complete sexual permission, he responded. (I don’t know any man who wouldn’t have responded, she says modestly.) And who knows? Maybe he was drunk on the same spirit of freedom as I was. All I know is that within a few minutes, I had managed to push and pull him through his house to his bedroom, and gotten him situated on his narrow pine bed, where I could now tear off both his clothes and mine with unfettered abandon.

I will say that I knew a good deal more about the act of love than Jim did. This was immediately obvious. If he’d ever had sex at all, he clearly hadn’t had much of it. He was navigating around my body the way you drive a car around an unfamiliar neighborhood—slowly and carefully while nervously looking for street signs and landmarks. This would not do. Swiftly it became evident that I would need to be the one driving this car, so to speak. I had learned some things back in New York, and in no time at all, I employed my rusty old skills and took over the whole operation. I did this quickly and wordlessly—too quickly for him to have a chance to question what I was up to.

I drove that man like a mule, Angela, is what I’m saying. I didn’t want to give him the slightest opportunity to reconsider, or to slow me down. He was breathless, he was carried away, he was fully consumed—and I kept him that way for as long as I could. And I will give him this—he had the most beautiful shoulders I’d ever seen.

Christ, but I had missed having sex!

What I will never forget about that occasion was glancing down at Jim’s all-American face as I rode him into oblivion, and seeing—almost lost amid his other expressions of passion and abandon—a look of baffled terror, as he stared up at me in excited, but panicked, wonderment. His guileless blue eyes, in that moment, seemed to be asking, “Who are you?”

If I had to guess, I suppose my eyes were responding: “I don’t know, pal, but it’s none of your business.”

When we were done, he could barely even look at me or speak to me.

It’s incredible how much I didn’t mind.

—

Jim departed the following day for basic training.

As for me, I was delighted to learn three weeks down the line that I had not gotten pregnant. It had been quite a gamble I’d taken there—having sex with no precautions whatsoever—but I do believe it was worth it.

As for the Norwegian sweater I’d been knitting, I finished it up and mailed it to my brother for Christmas. Walter was stationed in the South Pacific, so I’m not sure what use he had for a heavy wool sweater, but he wrote me a polite note of thanks. That was the first time he’d communicated with me directly since our dreadful drive home to Clinton. So that was a welcome development. A softening of relations, you could say.

Years later, I found out that Jim Larsen had won the Distinguished Service Cross for extreme valor and risk of life in actual combat with an armed enemy force. He eventually settled in New Mexico, married a wealthy woman, and served in the state senate. So much for my father saying he would never be a leader.

Good for Jim.

We both turned out fine in the end.

See that, Angela? Wars are not necessarily bad for everyone.

TWENTY-THREE

After Jim left, I became the recipient of much sympathy from my family and neighbors. They all assumed I was heartbroken to have lost my fiancé. I hadn’t earned their sympathy, but of course I took it anyway. It was better than condemnation and suspicion. It was certainly better than trying to explain anything.

My father was furious that Jim Larsen had abandoned both his hematite mine and his daughter (in that order of fury, without a doubt). My mother was mildly disappointed that I wouldn’t be getting married in April, after all, but she looked as though she would survive the blow. She had other things to do that weekend, she told me. April is a big time for horse shows in upstate New York.

As for me, I felt as though I had just woken from a drugged slumber. Now my only desire was to find something interesting to do with myself. I gave the briefest consideration to asking my parents if I could return to college, but my heart wasn’t in it. I wanted to get out of Clinton, though. I knew I couldn’t go back to New York City, having burned all my bridges, but I also knew that there were other cities to be considered. Philadelphia and Boston were rumored to be nice; maybe I could settle in one of those places.

I had just enough sense to realize that if I wanted to move, I would need money, so I got my sewing machine out of its crate at last and set up shop as a seamstress in our guest bedroom. I let word spread that I was now available for custom tailoring and alterations. Soon I had plenty to do. Wedding season was coming again. People needed dresses, but that need brought problems—namely, fabric shortages. You couldn’t get good lace and silk anymore from France, and moreover it was considered unpatriotic to spend a good deal of money on such a wild luxury as a wedding gown. So I used the scavenging skills I’d honed at the Lily Playhouse to create works of beauty out of precious little.

One of my friends from childhood—a bright girl named Madeleine—was getting married in late May. Her family had fallen on hard times since her father’s coronary the year before. She couldn’t have afforded a good dress in peacetime, much less now. So we scoured her family’s attic together, and I constructed Madeleine the most romantic concoction you ever saw—made from both of her grandmothers’ old wedding gowns, disassembled and put back together in a brand-new arrangement, with a long, antique lace train and everything. It was not an easy dress to make (the old silk was so fragile, I had to handle it like nitroglycerine), but it worked.

Madeleine was so grateful, she named me as her maid of honor. For the occasion of her wedding, I sewed myself a snazzy little kelly green suit with a peplum jacket, using some raw silk I’d inherited from my grandmother and had stored under my bed years earlier. (Ever since I’d met Edna Parker Watson, I tried to wear suits whenever possible. Among other lessons, that woman had taught me that a suit will always make you look more chic and important than a dress. And not too much jewelry! “A majority of the time,” Edna said, “jewelry is an attempt to cover up a badly chosen or ill-fitting garment.” And yes, it is true—I still could not stop thinking about Edna.)

Madeleine and I both looked splendid. She was a popular girl, and a lot of people came to her wedding. I got all kinds of customers after that. I also got to kiss one of Madeleine’s cousins at the reception—outside, against a honeysuckle-covered fence.

I was beginning to feel a bit more like myself.

—

Longing for a bit of frippery one afternoon, I put on a pair of sunglasses I’d purchased many months earlier in New York City, purely because Celia had swooned over them. The glasses were dark, with giant black frames, and they were studded with tiny seashells. They made me look like an enormous insect on a beach vacation, but I was mad for them.

Finding these sunglasses made me miss Celia. I missed the glorious spectacle of her. I missed dressing up together, and putting on makeup together, and conquering New York together. I missed the sensation of walking into a nightclub with her, and setting every man in the place panting at our arrival. (Hell, Angela—maybe I still miss that sensation, seventy years later!) Dear God, I wondered, what had become of Celia? Had she landed on her feet somehow? I hoped so, but I feared the worst. I feared she was scraping and struggling, broke and abandoned.

I came downstairs wearing my absurd glasses. My mother stopped in her tracks when she saw me. “For the love of mud, Vivian, what is that?”

“That’s called fashion,” I told her. “These sorts of frames are very much in style just now in New York City.”

“I’m not sure I’m glad I lived to see the day,” she said.

I kept them on anyhow.

How could I have explained that I wore them in honor of a fallen comrade, lost behind enemy lines?

—

In June, I asked my father if I could stop working in his office. I was making as much money sewing as I could make pretending to file papers and answer phones, and it was more satisfying, too. Best yet, as I told my father, my customers were paying me in cash, so I didn’t have to report my earnings to the government. That sealed the deal; he let me go. My father would do anything to hornswoggle the government.

For the first time in my life, I had some money saved.

I didn’t know what to do with it, but I had it.

Having money saved is not quite the same thing as having a plan, mind you—but it does start to make a girl feel as though a plan could someday be possible.

The days got longer.

—

In mid-July, I was sitting down to dinner with my parents when we heard a car pull into the driveway. My mother and father looked up, startled—the way they were always startled when something even slightly disturbed their routine.

“Dinner hour,” my father said, managing to form those two words into a grim lecture about the inevitable collapse of civilization.

I answered the door. It was Aunt Peg. She was red-faced and sweaty in the summer heat, she was wearing the most deranged getup (an oversized men’s plaid Oxford shirt, a pair of baggy dungaree culottes, and an old straw farm hat with a turkey feather in its brim), and I don’t think I’ve ever been more surprised or more happy to see anyone in my life. I was so surprised and happy, in fact, that I actually forgot at first to be ashamed of myself in her presence. I threw my arms around her in flagrant joy.

“Kiddo!” she said with a grin. “You’re looking choice!”

My parents had a less enthusiastic response to Peg’s arrival, but they adjusted themselves as best they could to this unexpected circumstance. Our maid dutifully set another place. My father offered Peg a cocktail, but to my surprise she said she would rather have iced tea, if it wasn’t too much trouble.

Peg plunked herself down at our dining-room table, mopped at her damp forehead with one of our fine Irish linen napkins, looked around at the lot of us, and smiled. “So! How’s everyone faring up here in the hinterlands?”

“I didn’t know you had a car,” my father said by means of a reply.

“I don’t. It belongs to a choreographer I know. He’s gone off to the Vineyard in his boyfriend’s Cadillac, so he let me borrow this one. It’s a Chrysler. It’s not so bad, for an old clunker. I’m sure he’d let you take it for a spin, if you’d like.”

“How’d you get the gas rations?” my father asked the sister whom he had not seen in over two years. (You might wonder why this was his preferred line of questioning, in lieu of a more standard salutation, but Dad had his motives. Gas rationing had just been mandated in New York State a few months earlier, and my father was in fits about it: He didn’t work as hard as he did in order to live in a totalitarian government! What would come next? Telling a man what time of night he might go to sleep? I prayed that the subject of gas rations would quickly change.)

“I cobbled together some stamps with a bit of bribery here and a bit of black-market elbow grease there. It’s not so hard in the city to get gas stamps. People don’t need their cars as much as they do out here.” Then Peg turned to my mother and asked warmly, “Louise, how are you?”

“I’m well, Peg,” said my mother, who was looking at her sister-in-law with an expression I would not call suspicious as much as cautious. (I couldn’t blame her. It didn’t make sense for Peg to be in Clinton. It wasn’t Christmas, and nobody had died.) “And how are you?”

“Disreputable as always. But it’s nice to escape the general mayhem of the city and come up here. I should do this more often. I’m sorry I didn’t let you folks know I was coming. It was a sudden decision. Your horses are well, Louise?”

“Well enough. There haven’t been as many shows since the war started, of course. They haven’t liked this heat, either. But they’re well.”

“What brings you here, anyhow?” my father asked.

My father didn’t hate his sister, but he did hold her in rather violent contempt. He thought she’d done nothing but revel about recklessly with her life (not unlike the way Walter perceived me, now that I think of it), and I suppose he had a point. Still, you’d think he could have ginned up a slightly more hospitable welcome.

“Well, Douglas, I’ll tell you. I’ve come to ask Vivian if she’ll return to New York City with me.”

At the sound of these words, a dusty old doorway in the center of my heart blew open, and a thousand white doves flew out. I didn’t even dare to speak. I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, the invitation would evaporate.

“Why?” my father asked.

“I need her. I’ve been commissioned by the military to put on a series of lunchtime shows for workers at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Some propaganda, some song-and-dance numbers, some romantic dramas and such. To keep up morale. That sort of thing. I don’t have enough help anymore to run the playhouse and also handle the Navy commission. I could really use Vivian.”

“But what does Vivian know about romantic dramas and such?” my mother asked.

“More than you might think,” said Peg.

Thankfully, Peg didn’t look at me when she said this. I could feel my neck turning red all the same.

“But she’s only just settled back here,” said my mother. “And she got so homesick last year in New York. The city didn’t suit her.”

“You were homesick?” Now Peg was looking me straight in the eye, with the faintest trace of a smile. “That’s what happened, was it?”

My blush spread farther up my neck. But again, I didn’t dare speak.

“Look,” said Peg, “it doesn’t have to be forever. Vivian could come back to Clinton if she gets homesick again. But I’m in a spot of trouble. It’s awful hard to find workers these days. The men are all gone. Even my showgirls have gone to work in factories. Everyone can pay better than I can. I just need hands on deck. Hands I can trust.”

She said it. She said the word “trust.”

“It’s hard for me to find workers, too,” said my father.

“What, is Vivian working for you?” Peg asked.

“No, but she did work for me for some time, and I might need her at some point. I think she could learn a great deal from working for me again.”

“Oh, does Vivian have a particular bent for the mining industry?”

“It just seems to me that you’ve driven a long distance to find a menial laborer. It seems to me you could’ve filled the position in the city. But then I’ve never understood why you always resist everything that might make your life easier.”

“Vivian’s not menial labor,” Peg said. “She’s a sensational costumer.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Years of exhaustive research in the field of theater, Douglas.”

“Ha. The field of theater.”

“I’d like to go,” I said, finding my voice at last.

“Why?” my father asked me. “Why would you want to go back to that city, where people live on top of each other, and you can’t even see the daylight?”

“Says the man who has spent the better part of his life in a mine,” retorted Peg.

Honestly, they were like a couple of children. It wouldn’t have surprised me if they started kicking each other under the table.

But now they were all looking at me, waiting for my answer. Why did I want to go to New York? How could I explain it? How could I explain what this proposal felt like, compared to the marriage proposal Jim Larsen had recently offered me? It was merely the difference between cough syrup and champagne.

“I would like to go to New York City again,” I announced, “because I wish to expand the prospects of my life.”

I delivered this line with a certain amount of authority, I felt, and it got everyone’s attention. (I must confess that I’d heard the phrase “I wish to expand the prospects of my life” on a radio soap opera recently, and it had stayed with me. But no matter. In this situation, it worked. Also it was true.)

“If you go,” said my mother, “we won’t be supporting you. We can’t keep giving you an allowance. Not at your age.”

“I don’t need an allowance. I’ll earn my own way.”

Even the word “allowance” embarrassed me. I never wanted to hear it again.

“You’ll have to find employment,” my father said.

Peg stared at her brother in astonishment. “It’s incredible, Douglas, how you never listen to me. Only moments ago—at this very table—I told you that I had a job for Vivian.”

“She’ll need proper employment,” said my father.

“She’ll have proper employment. She’ll be working for the United States Navy, just like her brother. The Navy’s given me enough of a budget to hire another person. She’ll be a government employee.”

Now it was I who wanted to kick Peg under the table. For my father, there was scarcely a worse combination of two words in the English language than “government employee.” It would have been better if Peg had said I’d be working as a “money thief.”

“You can’t keep going back and forth between here and New York City eternally, you know,” said my mother.

“I won’t,” I promised. And boy, did I mean it.

“I don’t want my daughter spending a lifetime working in the theater,” said my father.

Peg rolled her eyes. “Yes, that would be appalling.”

“I don’t like New York,” he said. “It’s a city full of second-place winners.”

“Yes, famously,” shot back Peg. “Nobody who has ever been successful at anything has ever lived in Manhattan.”

My father must not have cared that much about his argument, though, because he didn’t dig in.

In all honesty, I think my parents were willing to consider allowing me to leave because they were weary of me. In their eyes, I shouldn’t have been inhabiting their home anyway—and it was their home. I should have been out of the house a long time ago—ideally through the portal of college, followed by a finalizing shunt into matrimony. I didn’t come from a culture where children are welcome to remain in the family household after childhood. (My parents hadn’t even wanted me around that much during childhood, for that matter, if you consider the amount of time I’d spent at boarding school and summer camps.)

My father just had to razz Aunt Peg a little more before he could finally agree to it.

“I’m unconvinced that New York would be a good influence on Vivian,” he said. “I would hate to see a daughter of mine becoming a Democrat.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” said Peg, with a fat smile of satisfaction. “I’ve been into the matter. Turns out, they don’t allow registered Democrats into the Anarchist Party.”

That line actually made my mother laugh—to her credit.

“I’m going,” I pronounced. “I’m nearly twenty-two years old. There’s nothing here for me in Clinton. From this point forward, where I live should be my decision.”

“That’s laying it on a bit thick, Vivian,” said my mother. “You won’t be twenty-two until October, and you’ve never paid for a thing in your life. You don’t have the faintest notion of how anything in the world functions.”

Still, I could tell she was pleased by the tone of resolve in my voice. My mother, after all, was a woman who had spent her life on horseback, hurling herself at ditches and fences. Perhaps she was of the opinion that when faced with the challenges and obstacles of life, a woman should leap.

“If you take on this commitment,” said my father, “at the very least, we expect you to see it through. One cannot afford in life to do less than one promises.”

My heart quickened.

That last, limp lecture was his way of saying yes.

—

Peg and I left for New York City the following morning.

It took us forever to get there, as she insisted on driving her borrowed car at a patriotic, gas-preserving thirty-five miles an hour. I didn’t care how long it took, though. The sensation of being pulled back toward a place I loved—a place that I had not imagined would ever welcome me again—was such a delightful one that I didn’t mind stretching it out. For me, the ride was as thrilling as a Coney Island roller coaster. I was more keyed up than I’d felt in over a year. Keyed up, yes, but also nervous.

What would I find, back in New York?

Who would I find?

“You’ve made a hefty choice,” said Peg, as soon as we got on the road. “Good for you, kiddo.”

“Do you really need me back in the city, Peg?” It was a question I had not dared to pose in the presence of my parents.

She shrugged. “I can find a use for you.” But then she smiled. “No, Vivian—it’s quite true. I’ve bitten off more than I can chew with this Navy Yard commission. I might have come for you sooner, but I wanted to give you more time to cool your heels. In my experience, it’s always important to take a break between catastrophes. You took a bad knock in the city last year. I figured you’d need some time to recover.”

This reference to my catastrophe made my stomach flip.

“About that, Peg—” I started.

“It is no more to be mentioned.”

“I’m so sorry for what I did.”

“Of course you are. I’m sorry for many of the things I’ve done, too. Everyone is sorry. It’s good to be sorry—but don’t make a fetish of it. The one good thing about being Protestant is that we are not expected to cringe forever in contrition. Yours was a venial sin, Vivian, but not a mortal one.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“I’m not sure I do, either. It’s just something I read once. Here is what I do know, however: sins of the flesh will not get you punished in the afterlife. They will only get you punished in this life. As you’ve now learned.”

“I only wish I hadn’t caused so much trouble for everyone.”

“It’s easy to be wise after the event. But what’s the use of being twenty years old, if not to make gross errors?”

“Did you make gross errors when you were twenty?”

“Of course I did. Not nearly so bad as yours, but I had my days.”

She smiled to show she was teasing. Or maybe she wasn’t teasing. It didn’t matter. She was taking me back.

“Thank you for coming to get me, Peg.”

“Well, I missed you. I like you, kiddo, and once I like a person, I can only like them always. That’s a rule of my life.”

This was the most wonderful thing anyone had ever said to me. I marinated in it for a while. And then slowly the marinade turned sour, as I recalled that not everyone was as forgiving as Aunt Peg.

“I’m nervous about seeing Edna,” I said at last.

Peg looked surprised. “Why would you see Edna?”

“Why would I not see Edna? I’ll see her at the Lily.”

“Kiddo, Edna’s not at the Lily anymore. She’s in rehearsals right now for As You Like It, over at the Mansfield. She and Arthur moved out of the Lily in the spring. They’re living at the Savoy now. You didn’t hear?”

“But what about City of Girls?”

“Oh, boy. You really haven’t heard anything, have you?”

“Heard anything about what?”

“Back in March, Billy got an offer to move City of Girls to the Morosco Theatre. He took the offer, packed up the show, and went.”

“He packed up the show?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“He took it? He took it from the Lily?”

“Well, he wrote that play and he directed it—so technically it was his to take. That was his argument, anyway. Not that I argued with him about it. Wasn’t gonna win that one.”

“But what about—?” I couldn’t finish the question.

What about everything and everyone, is what I might have asked.

“Yes,” said Peg. “What about it? Well, that’s how Billy operates, kiddo. It was a good deal for him. You know the Morosco. It has a thousand seats, so the money is better. Edna went with him, of course. They did the show for a few months, same as always, until Edna got tired of it. Now she’s gone back to her Shakespeare. They’ve replaced her with Helen Hayes, which isn’t working, as far as I can see. I like Helen, don’t get me wrong. She’s got everything Edna’s got—except that thing that Edna’s got. Nobody’s got that thing. Gertrude Lawrence might have been able to do it justice—she’s got her own version of that thing—but she’s not in town. Really, nobody can do what Edna can do. But they’re still packing the house night after night over there, and it’s like Billy’s got a license to print money.”

I didn’t even know what to say to all this. I was appalled.

“Pick up your jaw, kiddo,” Peg said. “You look like you just fell off a turnip truck.”

“But what about the Lily? What about you and Olive?”

“Business as usual. Scrambling along. Putting on our dumb little productions again. Trying to lure back our humble neighborhood audience. It’s harder now that the war is on, and half our audience is off fighting it. It’s mostly grandmothers and children these days. That’s why I took the commission at the Navy Yard—we need the income. Olive was right all along, of course. She knew we’d be left holding the bag after Billy took his playthings and went away. I guess I knew it, too. That’s always the way it goes with Billy. Of course, he took our best performers with him, too. Gladys went with him. Jennie and Roland, too.”

She said all this so mildly. As though betrayal and ruin were the most mundane happenings you could ever imagine.

“What about Benjamin?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, Benjamin got drafted. Can’t blame Billy for that. But can you imagine Benjamin in the military? Putting a gun in those gifted hands? Such a waste. I hate it for him.”

“What about Mr. Herbert?”

“Still with me. Mr. Herbert and Olive will never leave me.”

“No sign of Celia, though?”

It wasn’t really a question. I already knew the answer.

“No sign of Celia,” Peg confirmed. “But I’m sure she’s fine. That cat has about six more lives in her, believe me. I’ll tell you what is interesting, though,” Peg went on, clearly not concerning herself with the fate of Celia Ray. “Billy was right, too. Billy said we could create a hit play together, and we actually did it. We pulled it off! Olive never believed in City of Girls. She thought it would bomb, but she was dead wrong. It was a terrific show. I was right, I believe, to take the risk with Billy. It was an awful lot of fun while it lasted.”

As she told me all this, I stared at her profile, searching for signs of disturbance or suffering—but there were none.

She turned her head, saw me staring at her, and laughed. “Try not to look so shocked, Vivian. It makes you look simple.”

“But Billy promised you the rights to the play! I was there! I heard him say it in the kitchen, the first morning he came to the Lily.”

“Billy promises a lot of things. Somehow, he never got around to putting it in writing.”

“I just can’t believe he did that to you,” I said.

“Look, kiddo, I’ve always known how Billy is, and I invited him in anyway. I don’t regret it. It was an adventure. You must learn in life to take things more lightly, my dear. The world is always changing. Learn how to allow for it. Someone makes a promise, and then they break it. A play gets good notices, and then it folds. A marriage looks strong, and then they divorce. For a while there’s no war, and then there’s another war. If you get too upset about it all, you become a stupid, unhappy person—and where’s the good in that? Now enough about Billy—how was your year? Where were you when Pearl Harbor happened?”

“At the movies. Watching Dumbo. Where were you?”

“Up at the Polo Grounds, watching football. Last Giants game of the season. Then suddenly, late in the second quarter, they start making these strange announcements, asking all active military personnel to report immediately to the main office. I knew right then something bad was afoot. Then Sonny Franck got injured. That distracted me. Not that Sonny Franck has anything to do with it. Hell of a player, though. What a tragic day. Were you at the movies with that fellow you got engaged to? What was his name?”

“Jim Larsen. How did you know I’d gotten engaged?”

“Your mother told me about it last night while you were packing. Sounds like you escaped by the skin of your teeth. Sounds like even your mother was relieved, though she’s tough to read. She was of the opinion that you didn’t much like him.”

This surprised me. My mother and I had never once had an intimate conversation about Jim—or about anything, really. How had she known?

“He was a nice man,” I said lamely.

“Good for him. Give him a trophy for it, but don’t marry a man just because he’s nice. And try not to make a habit of getting engaged in the first place, Vivvie. It can lead to marriage if you’re not careful. Why’d you say yes to him, anyhow?”