City of Girls

by Elizabeth Gilbert

  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?”

  “I didn’t know what else to do with mys
elf. Like I say, he was nice.”

  “So many girls get married for that same reason. Find something else to do with yourself, I say. Gosh, ladies, take up a hobby!”

  “Why did you get married?” I asked.

  “Because I liked him, Vivvie. I liked Billy very much. That’s the only reason to ever marry somebody—if you love them or like them. I still like him, you know. I had dinner with him only last week.”

  “You did?”

  “Of course I did. Look, I can understand that you’re upset with Billy right now—a lot of people are—but what did I tell you earlier, about my rule in life?”

  When I didn’t answer, because I couldn’t remember, she reminded me: “Once I like a person, I can only like them always.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” But I still wasn’t convinced.

  She smiled at me again. “What’s the matter, Vivvie? You think that rule should only apply to you?”

  It was evening by the time we arrived in New York City.

  It was July 15, 1942.

  The town was perched proud and solid on its nest of granite, tucked between its two dark rivers. Its stacks of skyscrapers glittered like columns of fireflies in the velvety summer air. We crossed over the silent, commanding bridge—broad and long as a condor’s wing—and entered the city. This dense place. This meaningful place. The greatest metropolis the world has ever known—or at least that’s what I’ve always thought.

  I was overcome with reverence.

  I would plant my little life there and never abandon it again.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The next morning, I woke up in Billy’s old room all over again. It was just me in the bed this time. No Celia, no hangover, no disasters.

  I had to admit: it felt good to have the bed to myself.

  For a while I listened to the sounds of the Lily Playhouse coming to life. Sounds I never thought I would hear again. Someone must have been running a bath, because the pipes were banging in protest. Two telephones were already ringing—one upstairs, and one in the offices below. I felt so happy, it made me light-headed.

  I put on my robe and wandered forth to make myself some coffee. I found Mr. Herbert sitting at the kitchen table just like always—wearing his undershirt, staring at his notebook, drinking his Sanka, and composing his jokes for an upcoming show.

  “Good morning, Mr. Herbert!” I said.

  He looked up at me and—to my amazement—he actually smiled.

  “I see you’ve been reinstated, Miss Morris,” he said. “Good.”

  By noon that day, I was at the Brooklyn Navy Yard with Peg and Olive, getting oriented to the job at hand.

  We’d taken the subway from midtown to the York Street station, then transferred to a streetcar. Over the next three years, I would make this commute nearly every day and in every kind of weather. I would share that commute with tens of thousands of other workers, all changing shifts like clockwork. The commute would become tedious, and sometimes spirit-breakingly exhausting. But on that day, it was all new and I was excited. I was outfitted in a snazzy lilac suit (although never again would I wear something so nice to that filthy, greasy destination) and my hair was clean and bouncy. I had my paperwork in order so that I could be officially inducted as a Navy employee (Bureau of Yards and Docks, Classification: Skilled Laborer). The job came with a salary of seventy cents an hour, which was a fortune for a girl my age. They even issued me my own pair of safety glasses—although my eyes were never in danger from anything more serious than Peg’s cigarette embers flying up in my face.

  This would be my first real job—if you don’t count the work I did in my father’s office back in Clinton, which you shouldn’t.

  I’d been nervous to see Olive again. I still felt so ashamed of myself for my shenanigans, and for having needed her to rescue me from the talons of Walter Winchell. I was afraid she might chastise me, or look upon me with contempt. I had my first moment alone with her that morning. She and Peg and I were walking downstairs, on our way out the door to Brooklyn. Peg had to run back up to get her thermos, so for a minute it had just been Olive and me standing there on the landing between the second and third floors of the playhouse. I decided this would be my opportunity to apologize, and to thank her for having gallantly saved me.

  “Olive,” I began. “I owe you a great debt—”

  “Oh, Vivian,” she interrupted, “don’t be so grasping.”

  And that was the end of that.

  We had a job to do, and there wasn’t any time for flimflam.

  Specifically, our job was this:

  We were assigned by the military to put on two shows a day at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, in a bustling cafeteria located right on Wallabout Bay. You have to understand, Angela, that the Navy Yard was huge—the busiest in the world—with over two hundred acres of buildings and almost a hundred thousand employees working around the clock throughout the war years. There were over forty active cafeterias at the Yard and we were in charge of “entertainment and education” for just one of them. Our cafeteria was number 24, but everyone called it “Sammy.” (I was never clear on why. Maybe because they served so many sandwiches? Or maybe because our head cook was named Mr. Samuelson?) Sammy fed thousands of people a day—serving enormous piles of limp and tired food to equally limp and tired laborers.

  It was our task to entertain these weary workers while they ate. But we were more than entertainers; we were also propagandists. The Navy filtered information and inspiration through us. We had to keep everyone angry and fired up at Hitler and Hirohito at all times (we killed Hitler so many times, in so many different skits, that I can’t believe the man wasn’t having nightmares about us all the way over there in Germany). But we also had to keep our workers concerned about the welfare of our boys overseas—reminding them that whenever they slacked off on the job, they put American sailors at risk. We had to issue warnings that spies were everywhere, and that loose lips sink ships. We had to give safety lessons and news updates. And in addition to all that, we had to deal with military censors who often sat in the front row of our performances to make sure we were not deviating from the party line. (My favorite censor was a genial man named Mr. Gershon. I spent so much time with him, we became like a family. I attended his son’s bar mitzvah.)

  We had to communicate all this information to our workers in thirty minutes, twice a day.

  For three years.

  And we had to keep our material fresh and fun, or the audience might start throwing food at us. (“It’s good to be back in the field,” Peg said happily, the first time our audience started booing—and I think she truly meant it.) It was an impossible, thankless, exhausting job, and the Navy gave us precious little to work with, in terms of our “theater.” At the front of the cafeteria was a small stage—a platform, really, built of rough pine. We didn’t have a curtain or stage lighting, and our “orchestra” amounted to a honky-tonk stand-up piano played by a tiny old local named Mrs. Levinson who (incongruously) could pound those keys so hard you could hear the music all the way from Sands Street. Our props were vegetable crates, and our “dressing room” was the back corner of the kitchen, right next to the dishwasher’s station. As for our actors, they were not exactly the cream of the crop. Most of New York’s showbiz community had either gone off to battle or gotten good industrial jobs since the advent of the war. This meant that the only people left for us to recruit were the sorts of folks whom Olive, not very kindly, called “the lost and the lame.” (To which Peg replied, also not very kindly, “How does that differ from any other theater company?”)

  So we improvised. We had men in their sixties playing young swains. We had hefty middle-aged women playing the parts of ingénues, or boys. We couldn’t pay our players nearly as much as they could earn working on the line, so we were constantly losing our actors and dancers to the Navy Yard itself. Some pretty young girl would be singing a song on our stage one day, and the next day you’d see her eating at Sammy on her lunch break, with her hair u
p in a bandanna and coveralls on. She’d have a wrench in her pocket and a hearty paycheck on its way. It’s tough to get a girl back in the spotlight once she’s seen a hearty paycheck—and we didn’t even have a spotlight.

  Putting together costumes was, of course, my primary job, although I also wrote the occasional script, and even sometimes penned a song lyric or two. My work had never been more difficult. I had virtually no budget, and, because of the war, there was a nationwide shortage of all the materials I needed. It wasn’t just fabrics that were scarce; you couldn’t get buttons, zippers, or hooks and eyes, either. I became ferociously inventive. In my most shining moment, I created a vest for the character of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy using some two-toned jacquard damask I’d ripped from a rotting, overstuffed couch I’d found on the corner of Tenth Avenue and Forty-fourth Street one morning, awaiting removal to the dump. (I won’t pretend that the costume smelled good, but our king really looked like a king—and that’s saying something, given the fact that he was portrayed by a sunken-chested old man who only one hour before showtime had been cooking beans in the Sammy kitchen.)

  Needless to say, I became a fixture at Lowtsky’s Used Emporium and Notions—even more than before the war. Marjorie Lowtsky, who was now in high school, became my partner in costuming. She was my fixer, really. Lowtsky’s now had a contract to sell textiles and rags to the military, so even they didn’t have as much volume or variety to choose from anymore—but they were still the best game in town. So I gave Marjorie a small cut of my salary and she culled and saved the choicest materials for me. Truly, I could not have done my job without her help. Despite our age difference, the two of us grew genuinely fond of each other as the war dragged on, and I soon came to think of her as a friend—although an odd one.

  I can still remember the first time I ever shared a cigarette with Marjorie. I was standing on the loading dock of her parents’ warehouse in the dead of winter, taking a break from sorting through the bins in order to have a quiet smoke.