City of Girls (23 page)

“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 me and Anthony 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.