“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. . . .
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.)
City of Girls Page 27
