City of Girls (36 page)

At one point, we both paused what we were doing to watch Nathan. He was carefully drawing stick figures
in chalk on the pathway. But then he became scared of some pigeons—some very innocuous pigeons, which were minding their own business and pecking at the ground a few feet away from where Nathan sat. He stopped drawing and froze. We watched as the boy grew wide-eyed with terror at the sight of the birds.

Under her breath, Marjorie said, “Look at him. He’s afraid of everything.”

“That’s right,”
I agreed, because it was true. He really was.

She said, “I can’t even give him a bath without him thinking I’m trying to drown him. Where did he even hear of mothers drowning their children? Why would that idea even be in his head? You never tried to drown him in the bath, did you, Vivian?”

“I’m almost certain I didn’t. But you know how I get when I’m angry. . . .”

I was trying to make her
laugh but it didn’t work.

“I don’t know about this child,” she said, her face overcome by worry. “He’s even afraid of his red hat. I think it’s the color. I tried to put it on him this morning, and he burst into tears. I had to let him have the blue one. Do you know something, Vivian? He has utterly ruined my life.”

“Oh, Marjorie, don’t say that,” I said, laughing.

“No, it’s true, Vivian. He’s
ruined everything. Let’s just admit it. I should’ve gone to Canada and given him up for adoption. Then we would still have money, and I would have some freedom. I’d be able to sleep through the night, without listening for his coughing. I wouldn’t be seen as a fallen woman with a bastard child. I wouldn’t be so tired. Maybe I would have time to paint. I would still have a figure. Maybe I could
even have a boyfriend. Let’s just call a spade a spade: I never should’ve had this kid.”

“Marjorie! Stop it. You don’t mean that.”

But she wasn’t done. “No, I
do
mean it, Vivian. He was the worst decision I ever made in my life. You can’t deny that. Nobody could deny that.”

I was starting to get terribly worried, but then she said, “The only problem is, I love him so much, I can’t even bear
it. I mean—
look at him
.”

And there he was. There was that touching little broken figurine of a boy, trying to get as far away as possible from any and all pigeons (which is not easy in a New York City park). There was our little Nathan, in his snowsuit, with his chapped lips and his cheeks all red with eczema. There was his sweet, peaked face—glancing around in panic for somebody to protect him
from some nine-ounce birds who were completely ignoring him. He was perfect. He was made of spun glass. He was a reedy little disaster and I adored him.

I glanced over at Marjorie, and could see that she was now crying. This was significant because Marjorie never cried. (That had always been my department.) I’d never seen her looking so rueful and so tired.

Marjorie said, “Do you think Nathan’s
father might claim him someday, if he ever stops acting so Jewish?”

I punched her in the arm. “Stop it, Marjorie!”

“I’m just so
weary
, Vivian. But I love this kid so much, sometimes I think it will break me in half. Is that the dirty trick? Is this how they get mothers to ruin their lives for their children? By tricking them into loving them so much?”

“Maybe. It’s not a bad strategy.”

We watched
Nathan for a while longer, as he braved the specter of the harmless, oblivious, retreating pigeons.

“Hey, don’t forget that my son ruined
your
life, too,” Marjorie said, after a long silence.

I shrugged. “A little bit, sure. But I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s not as though I had anything more important to attend to.”

The years passed.

The city continued to change. Midtown Manhattan became
wilted and moldy and sinister and vile. We never went near Times Square anymore. It was a latrine.

In 1963, Walter Winchell lost his newspaper column.

Death started to pick at my community.

In 1964, Uncle Billy died in Hollywood of a sudden heart attack while dining with a starlet at the Beverly Hills Hotel. We all had to admit that this was just
exactly
the death Billy Buell would’ve wanted.
(“He floated away on a river of champagne” was Peg’s take.)

Only ten months later, my father died. His was not such a peaceful death, I’m afraid. Driving home from the country club one afternoon, he hit black ice and crashed into a tree. He lived for a few days, but succumbed to complications after emergency spine surgery.

My father died an angry man. He was no longer a captain of
industry—hadn’t
been one for years. He had lost his hematite mine after the war. He got into such a ferocious battle against union activists that he drove the company into the ground—spending nearly all his fortune on legal battles against his workers. His had become a scorched-earth policy of negotiation:
If I cannot control this business, then nobody can
. He died never having forgiven the American government
for having taken his son in the war, or the unions for having taken his business, or the modern world itself for having chipped away over the decades at every last one of his cherished, narrow, old-fashioned beliefs.

We all drove up to Clinton for the funeral: me, Peg, Olive, Marjorie, and Nathan. My mother was silently appalled by the spectacle of my friend Marjorie in her strange clothes with
her strange child. My mother had become a deeply unhappy woman over the years, and she responded to no gestures of kindness from anyone. She didn’t want us there.

We stayed only one night, and hustled back to the city just as fast as we could.

Home was New York City now, anyway. It had been for years.

More time passed.

After a certain age, Angela, time just drizzles down upon your head like
rain in the month of March: you’re always surprised at how much of it can accumulate, and how fast.

One night in 1964, I was watching Jack Paar on television. I was only halfway paying attention, as I was working on disassembling an old Belgian wedding gown without destroying its ancient fibers in the process. Then the ads came on, and I heard a familiar female voice—gruff, tough, and sarcastic.
The cigarette-roughened voice of a real old New York City broad. Before I could even register it in my mind, that voice set off a depth charge in my gut.

I looked up at the screen and caught a glimpse of a thickset, chestnut-haired woman with a great prow of a bosom, shouting in a funny Bronx accent about all her problems with floor wax. (“It’s not enough that I gotta deal with these crazy kids
of mine, but now it’s sticky floors, too?!”) She could have been any middle-aged brunette, by the sight of her. But I would’ve known that voice anywhere: it was Celia Ray!

I had thought of Celia so many times over the years—with guilt, with curiosity, with anxiety. All I could ever imagine for her life were bad outcomes. In my darkest fantasies, the story was this: After being exiled from the
Lily Playhouse, Celia had lived a life of doom and ruin. Perhaps she had died in the streets somewhere along the way, brutalized by the kind of man she had once so effortlessly controlled. Other times, I imagined her as an old prostitute. Sometimes I would pass by a drunken, middle-aged woman on the street who looked (there is no other word for it)
trashy,
and I would wonder if it was Celia. Had
she dyed her hair so blond that it had turned brittle and orange? Was she that woman over there in the tottering heels, with the bare, veined legs? Was that her, with the bruised circles under the eyes? Was that her, picking through the garbage can? Was that her red lipstick on that collapsing mouth?

But I’d been wrong: Celia was fine. Better than fine—she was selling floor wax on TV! Oh, that
stubborn, determined, little survivor. Still fighting her way into the spotlight.

I never saw the ad again, and I never tried to track Celia down. I didn’t want to interfere with her life, and I knew better than to assume that she and I would have anything in common anymore. We’d never really had anything in common in the first place. Scandal or no scandal, I believe that our friendship was always
destined to have been momentary—a collision of two vain young girls who intersected at the zenith of their beauty and the nadir of their intelligence, and who had
blatantly used each other to acquire status and turn men’s heads. That’s all it had ever been, really, and that was perfect. That’s all it had ever needed to be. I’d found deeper and richer female friendships later on in life, and I
hoped that Celia had, too.

So, no, I never sought her out.

But it is impossible for me to convey the amount of delight and pride that it gave me to hear her voice blasting out of my television set that evening.

It made me want to cheer.

A quarter of a century later, folks, and Celia Ray was still in show business!

TWENTY-NINE

In the late summer of 1965, my Aunt Peg received a curious letter in the mail.

It was from the commissioner of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The letter explained that the Navy Yard would soon be closing down forever. The city was transforming, and the Navy had decided that it was no longer feasible to maintain a shipbuilding industry in such an expensive urban area. Before it closed,
however, the Yard would host a ceremonial reunion—throwing open the gates once more, in celebration of all the Brooklyn workers who had labored there so heroically during World War II. Since it was the twentieth anniversary of the end of the war, this kind of celebration seemed particularly appropriate.

The commissioner’s office had gone through their files and found Peg’s name on some old paperwork,
listing her as having been an “independent entertainment contractor.” They’d managed to track her down through city tax records and now they were wondering whether Mrs. Buell might consider producing a small commemorative show on the day of the Navy Yard reunion, to celebrate the accomplishments of
the wartime laborers? They were looking for something of a nostalgia piece—just twenty minutes or
so of old-time singing and dancing, in the style of the war days.

Now, Peg would have enjoyed nothing more than to take on this job. The only problem was, she was no longer in good health. That big, tall body of hers was starting to break down. She was suffering from emphysema—not surprising after her lifetime of chain-smoking—and she also had arthritis, and her eyes were starting to go. As she
explained it: “The doctor says that there’s nothing much wrong with me, kiddo, but there’s nothing much right with me, either.”

She had retired from her job at the high school a few years earlier, due to her failing health, and she didn’t get around easily anymore. Marjorie and Nathan and I had dinner with Peg and Olive a few nights a week, but that was about all Peg could handle in terms of
excitement. Most evenings, she would just stretch across the couch with her eyes closed, trying to catch her breath, while Olive read to her from the sports pages. So, no, unfortunately, it wasn’t going to be possible for Peg to produce a commemorative show at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

But I could do it.

It turned out to be easier than I thought—and far more fun.

I’d helped to create so many
hundreds of skits back in the day, and I guess I never lost the knack for it. I hired some of the drama students from Olive’s high school as my actors and dancers. Susan (my friend with the passion for modern dance) said she would handle the choreography, though it didn’t need to be anything complex. I borrowed the organist from the church down the street, and worked with him on writing some elementary,
corny songs. And of course, I created the costumes, which were simple enough: just a bunch of dungarees and overalls for both the boys and the girls. I threw some red kerchiefs
around the girls’ heads and the same red kerchiefs around the boys’ necks, and
voilà—
now they were industrial workers from the 1940s.

On September 18, 1965, we hauled all of our theatrical gear over to the ratty old Navy
Yard and got ready for our show. It was a bright and windy morning on the waterfront, and gusts kept rising off the bay and knocking people’s hats off. But a fairly decent-sized crowd had shown up, and there was a carnival-type feeling to the festivities. There was a Navy band playing old songs and a women’s auxiliary group serving cookies and refreshments. A few high-ranking Navy officials spoke
about how we had won that war, and how we would win all the wars to come until the end of days. The first woman ever licensed to work as a welder at the Yard during World War II gave a short, nervous speech in a voice much meeker than you might expect from a lady of such accomplishment. And a ten-year-old girl with chapped knees sang the National Anthem, wearing a dress that was not going to fit
her next summer, and was not keeping her warm right now.

Then it was time for our little show.

I had been asked by the commissioner of the Navy Yard to introduce myself and to explain our skit. I’m not crazy about public speaking, but I managed to pull through it without bringing down ruin upon my head. I told the audience who I was, and what my role had been at the Yard during the war. I made
a joke about the poor quality of food at the Sammy cafeteria, which earned a few scattered laughs from those who remembered. I thanked the veterans in the audience for their service, and the families of Brooklyn for their sacrifice. I said that my own brother had been a naval officer who lost his life in the final days of the war. (I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get through that section of
my remarks without losing my composure, but I managed it.) Then I
explained that we were going to be re-creating a typical propaganda skit, which I hoped would boost the morale of the current audience just as much as it used to cheer on the workers during their lunch breaks.

The show I had written was about a typical day on the line at the Navy Yard, building battleships in Brooklyn. The high
school kids in their overalls played the workers who sang and danced with joy as they did their part to make the world safe for democracy. Pandering to my constituency, I’d peppered the script with slangy dialogue that I hoped the old Navy Yard workers would remember.

“Coming through with the general’s car!” shouted one of my young actresses, pushing a wheelbarrow.

“No carping!” shouted another
girl to a character who was complaining about the long hours and the dirty conditions.

I named the factory manager Mr. Goldbricker, which I knew all the old laborers would appreciate (“goldbricker” being the favorite old Yard term for “one who slacks off at work”).

Look, it wasn’t exactly Tennessee Williams, but the audience seemed to like it. What’s more, the high school drama club was having
fun performing it. For me, though, the best part was seeing little Nathan—my ten-year-old sweetheart, my dear boy—sitting in the front row with his mother, watching the production with such wonder and amazement, you would’ve thought he was at the circus.

Our big finale was a number called “No Time for Coffee!” about how important it was at the Navy Yard to keep on schedule at all costs. The song
contained the ever-so-catchy line: “Even if we had coffee, we wouldn’t have had the milk! / War rations made coffee just as valuable as silk!” (I don’t like to boast, but I did write that snazzy bit of brilliance all by myself—so move over, Cole Porter.)

Then we killed Hitler, and the show was over, and everyone was happy.

As we were packing up our cast and our props into the school bus we had
borrowed for the day, a uniformed patrolman approached me.

“May I have a word with you, ma’am?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said. “I’m sorry we’re parked here but it will just be a moment.”

“Could you step away from the vehicle, please?”

He looked terribly serious, and now I was concerned. What had we done wrong? Should we not have set up a stage? I’d assumed there were permits for all this.

I followed him over to his patrol car, where he leaned against the door and fixed me with a grave stare.

“I heard you speaking earlier,” he said. “Did I hear you correctly when you said your name is Vivian Morris?” His accent identified him as pure Brooklyn. He could have been born right on this very spot of dirt, by the sound of that voice.

“That’s right, sir.”

“You said your brother was killed
in the war?”

“That’s correct.”

The patrolman took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. His hands were trembling. I wondered if perhaps he was a veteran himself. He was the right age for it. Sometimes they were shaky like this. I studied him more closely. He was a tall man in his middle forties. Painfully thin. Olive skin and large, dark-brown eyes—further darkened by the circles beneath
them and by the lines of worry above. Then I saw what looked like burn scars, running up the right side of his neck. Ropes of scars, twisted in red, pink, and yellowish flesh. Now I knew he was a veteran. I had a feeling I was about to hear a war story, and that it would be a tough one.

But then he shocked me.

“Your brother was Walter Morris, wasn’t he?” he asked.

Now
I
was the one who felt
shaky. My knees almost went out of business. I had not mentioned Walter by name during my speech.

Before I could speak, the patrolman said, “I knew your brother, ma’am. I served with him on the
Franklin
.”

I put my hand over my mouth to stop the involuntary little sob that had risen in my throat.

“You knew
Walter
?” Despite my effort to control my voice, the words came out choked. “You were
there
?”

I didn’t elaborate upon my question, but clearly he knew what I meant. I was asking him:
You were there on March 19, 1945? You were there when a kamikaze pilot crashed right through the flight deck of the USS
Franklin
, detonating the fuel storages, igniting the onboard aircraft, and turning the ship itself into a bomb? You were there when my brother and over eight hundred other men died?
You were there, when my brother was buried at sea?

He nodded several times—a nervous, jerky bobbing of the head.

Yes. He was there.

I told my eyes not to glance again at the burn marks on this man’s neck.

My eyes glanced there anyhow, goddamn it.

I looked away. Now I didn’t know where to look.

Seeing me so uncomfortable, the man himself became only more nervous. His face looked almost panic-stricken.
He seemed legitimately distraught. He was either terrified of upsetting me, or he was reliving his own nightmare. Maybe both. Witnessing this, I gathered my senses about me, took a deep breath, and set myself to the task of trying to put this poor man at ease. What was my pain, after all, compared to what he had lived through?

“Thank you for telling me,” I said, in a slightly more steady voice.
“I’m sorry for my reaction. It’s just a shock to hear my brother’s name after all these years. But it’s an honor to meet you.”

I put my hand on his arm, to give him a little squeeze of gratitude. He cringed as though I had attacked him. I pulled back my hand, but slowly. He reminded me of the sort of horses my mother was always good with—the jumpy ones, the agitated ones. The timorous and troubled
ones that nobody but she could handle. I instinctively took the tiniest step back, and dropped my arms to my sides. I wanted to show him that I was no threat.

I tried a different tack.

“What’s your name, sailor?” I asked in a more gentle voice—almost a teasing voice.

“I’m Frank Grecco.”

He didn’t reach out for a handshake, so I didn’t, either.

“How well did you know my brother, Frank?”

He nodded once more. Again, with that nervous bobbing. “We were officers together on the flight deck. Walter was my division commander. We’d been ninety-day wonders together, too. Went in different directions at first, but ended up on the same ship at the end of the war. By then, he outranked me.”

“Oh. All right.”

I wasn’t sure what any of those words meant, but I didn’t want him to stop talking.
There was somebody standing right in front of me who had known my
brother
. I wanted to find out everything about this man.

“Did you grow up around here, Frank?” I asked, already knowing the answer from his accent. But I was trying to make things as easy for him as I could. I would give him the simple questions first.

Again, the twitchy nod. “South Brooklyn.”

“And were you and my brother good
friends?”

He winced.

“Miss Morris, I need to tell you something.” The patrolman took off his hat once more and jammed his trembling fingers through his hair. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”

“Why would I recognize you?”

“Because I already know you, and you already know me. Please don’t walk away, ma’am.”

“Why on earth would I walk away?”

“Because I met you back in 1941,” he said. “I was
the guy who drove you home to your parents’ house.”

The past came roaring up at me like a dragon woken from a deep slumber. I felt dizzy with the heat and the force of it. In a vertiginous series of flashes, I saw Edna’s face, Arthur’s face, Celia’s face, Winchell’s face. I saw my own young face in the back of that beat-up Ford—shamed and shattered.

This was the
driver
.

This was the guy who
had called me a dirty little whore, right in front of my brother.

“Ma’am,” he said—and now he was the one grabbing
my
arm. “Please don’t walk away.”

“Stop saying that.” My voice came out ragged. Why did he keep saying that, when I wasn’t going anywhere? I just wanted him to stop saying that.

But he did it again: “Please don’t walk away, ma’am. I need to talk to you.”

I shook my head. “I can’t—”

“You need to understand—I’m so sorry,” he said.

“Could you let go of my arm, please?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, but he dropped my arm.

What did I feel?

Repulsion
. Pure repulsion.

I couldn’t tell, though, if it was repulsion for him or for me. Whatever it was, it was growing out of a trove of shame that I thought I’d buried long ago.

I hated this guy. That’s what I felt:
hate
.

“I was a stupid
kid,” he said. “I didn’t know how to act.”

“I really must go now.”

“Please don’t walk away, Vivian.”

His voice was rising, which disturbed me. But hearing him call me by my name was even worse. I hated it, that he knew my name. I hated that he’d watched me onstage today, and knew who I was the whole time—that he knew this much about me. I hated that he’d seen me get choked up about my brother.
I hated that he probably knew my brother better than I did. I hated that Walter had attacked me in front of him. I hated that this man had once called me a dirty little whore. Who did he think he was, approaching me now, after all these years? This sense of rage and disgust compounded, and it strengthened something in my spine: I needed to leave
right now
.