But now I rushed over to Sutton Place, to bring the story to Peg.
I found my aunt stretched out on her couch, as she was wont to do those days—alternating between smoking and coughing. She was listening to radio coverage of the Yankees. As soon as I walked in, she told me that it was Mickey Mantle Day over at Yankee Stadium—that they were honoring his stellar fifteen-year career in baseball. In fact, when I burst into the apartment and started talking, Peg put up her hand: Joe DiMaggio was speaking, and she didn’t want him interrupted.
“Have some respect, Vivvie,” she said, all business.
So I shut my mouth and let her have her moment. I knew she would have liked to be there at the stadium in person, but she wasn’t strong enough anymore for such a strenuous excursion. But Peg’s face was awash with rapture and emotion as she listened to DiMaggio honoring Mantle. By the end of his speech, she had fat tears running down her cheeks. (Peg could handle anything—war, catastrophe, failure, death of a relative, a cheating husband, the demolition of her beloved theater—without shedding a tear, but great moments in sports history always made her weepy.)
I’ve often wondered if our conversation would have gone differently, had she not been so saturated with emotion for the Yankees that day. There’s no way of telling. I did sense that it was frustrating for her to turn off the radio once DiMaggio was done talking and give her full attention to me—but she was a generous person, so she did it anyhow. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Coughed some more. Lit another cigarette. Then she listened to me with full absorption, as I began to tell her my tale of woe.
Midway through my saga, Olive came in. She had been out shopping at the market. I stopped talking in order to help her put away groceries, and then Peg said, “Vivvie, start from the beginning again. Tell Olive everything you’ve been telling me.”
This wouldn’t have been my preference. I had learned to love Olive Thompson over the years, but she would not be the first candidate I would run to if I needed a shoulder to cry on. Olive wasn’t exactly a soft bosom of overflowing sympathy. Still, she was there, and she and Peg—as they had gotten older—had increasingly become my parental figures.
Seeing my hesitation, Peg said, “Just tell her about it, Vivvie. Trust me—Olive is better at this kind of stuff than any of us.”
So I backed up, and started my saga all over again. The car ride in 1941, Walter’s disgracing of me, the driver calling me a dirty little whore, my dark time of shame and banishment in upstate New York, and now the return of the driver—a patrolman with burn scars who had been on the Franklin. Who knew my brother. Who knew everything.
The women listened to me attentively. And when I got to the end they stayed attentive—as though they were waiting for more of the story.
“And then what happened?” asked Peg when she realized I wasn’t talking anymore.
“Nothing. After that, I left.”
“You left?”
“I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want to see him.”
“Vivian, he knew your brother. He was on the Franklin. From your description, it sounds as though he was gravely wounded in that attack. And you didn’t want to talk to him?”
“He hurt me,” I said.
“He hurt you? He hurt your feelings twenty-five years ago, and you just walked away from him? This person who knew your brother? This veteran?”
I said, “That car ride was the worst thing that ever happened to me, Peg.”
“Oh, was it?” snapped Peg. “Did you think to ask the man about the worst thing that ever happened to him?”
She was becoming agitated, in a manner that was not at all in character. This was not what I had come for. I wanted comfort, but I was being scolded. I was starting to feel foolish and embarrassed.
“Never mind,” I said. “It’s nothing. I shouldn’t have bothered you today.”
“Don’t be stupid—it’s not nothing.”
She had never spoken to me this sharply.
“I should never have brought it up,” I said. “I interrupted your game—you’re just irritated with me about that. I’m sorry I burst in here.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about the goddamn baseball game, Vivian.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just upset and I wanted to talk to someone.”
“You’re upset? You walked away from that wounded veteran and then came here to me, because you wanted to talk about your difficult life?”
“Jesus, Peg—don’t come down on me like this. Just forget it. Forget I said anything.”
“How can I?”
Then she started coughing—one of her awful, jagged, coughing fits. Her lungs sounded barbed and brittle. She sat up, and Olive pounded on her back for a bit. Then Olive lit another cigarette for Peg, who took the deepest drags she could, interspersed with more fits of coughing.
Peg composed herself. Dummy that I was, I was hoping she was about to apologize for having been so mean to me. Instead she said, “Look, kiddo, I give up here. I don’t understand what you want out of this situation. I don’t understand you at all right now. I’m just very disappointed in you.”
She had never said that. Not even all those years ago, when I had betrayed her friend and nearly capsized her hit show.
Then she turned to Olive, and said, “I don’t know. What do you think, boss?”
Olive sat quietly with her hands folded over her lap, looking down at the floor. I listened to Peg’s labored breathing, and to the sound of a window shade on the other side of the room, tapping in the breeze. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what Olive thought. But there we were.
Finally Olive looked up at me. Her expression was stern, as always. But as she chose her words, I could sense that she was choosing them carefully, so as to not do unnecessary harm.
“The field of honor is a painful field, Vivian,” she said.
I waited for her to say more, but she didn’t.
Peg started laughing—and again coughing. “Well, thank you for your contribution, Olive. That settles everything.”
We sat there quietly for a long time. I got up and helped myself to one of Peg’s cigarettes, even though I’d quit a few weeks earlier. Or had sort of quit.
“The field of honor is a painful field,” Olive went on at last, as though Peg had not spoken. “That’s what my father taught me when I was young. He taught me that the field of honor is not a place where children can play. Children don’t have any honor, you see, and they aren’t expected to, because it’s too difficult for them. It’s too painful. But to become an adult, one must step into the field of honor. Everything will be expected of you now. You will need to be vigilant in your principles. Sacrifices will be demanded. You will be judged. If you make mistakes, you must account for them. There will be instances when you must cast aside your impulses and take a higher stance than another person—a person without honor—might take. Such instances may hurt, but that’s why honor is a painful field. Do you understand?”
I nodded. The words, I understood. What this had to do with Walter and Frank Grecco and me, I had no clue. But I was listening. I had a feeling her words would make more sense to me later, once I had time to give them more consideration. But as I say—I was listening. This was the longest speech I’d ever heard Olive make, so I knew this was an important moment. Actually, I don’t think I’d ever listened more carefully to anyone.
“Of course, nobody is required to stand in the field of honor,” Olive continued. “If you find it too challenging, you may always exit, and then you can remain a child. But if you wish to be a person of character, I’m afraid this is the only way. But it may be painful.”
Olive turned her hands over on her lap, exposing her palms.
“All this, my father taught me when I was young. It constitutes everything I know. I try to apply it to my life. I’m not always successful, but I try. If any of this is helpful to you, Vivian, you are welcome to put it to use.”
It took me over a week to contact him.
/>
The difficulty wasn’t in finding him—that part had been easy. Peg’s doorman’s older brother was a police captain, and it took him no time at all to confirm that, yes, there was a Francis Grecco stationed as a patrolman in the 76th Precinct in Brooklyn. They gave me the phone number for the precinct desk, and that was that.
Picking up the phone was the hard part.
It always is.
I will admit that the first few times I called, I hung up just as soon as somebody answered. The next day, I talked myself out of calling back. The next few days, too. When I found my courage to try again, and to actually stay on the line, I was told that Patrolman Grecco was not there. He was out on the job. Did I want to leave a message? No.
I tried a couple more times over the next few days and always got the same message: he was out on patrol. Patrolman Grecco clearly did not have a desk job. Finally I agreed to leave a message. I gave my name, and left the number for L’Atelier. (Let his fellow officers wonder why a nervous broad from a bridal shop was calling him so insistently.)
Not one hour later, the phone rang and it was him.
We exchanged awkward greetings. I told him that I would like to meet him in person, if he would be amenable to that idea? He said he would. I asked if it would be easier for me to go out to Brooklyn, or for him to come to Manhattan. He said Manhattan would be fine; he had a car and he liked to drive. I asked when he was free. He said he would be free later that very afternoon. I suggested that he meet me at Pete’s Tavern at five o’clock. He hesitated, then said, “I’m sorry, Vivian, but I’m not good at restaurants.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I didn’t want to put him on the spot.
I said, “How about we meet in Stuyvesant Square, then? On the west side of the park. Would that be better?”
He allowed that this would be better.
“By the fountain,” I said, and he agreed—yes, by the fountain.
I didn’t know how to go about any of this. I really didn’t want to see him again, Angela. But I kept hearing what Olive had said to me: You can remain a child. . . .
Children run away from problems. Children hide.
I didn’t want to remain a child.
I couldn’t help but think back to the time when Olive had rescued me from Walter Winchell. I could see now that she’d saved me in 1941 precisely because she had known that I was still a child. She could tell that I was not yet somebody who was accountable for her own actions. When Olive had told Winchell that I was an innocent who’d been seduced, it had not been a ploy. She had really meant it. Olive had seen me for what I was—an immature and unformed girl, who could not yet be expected to stand in the painful field of honor. I had needed a wise and caring adult to save me, and Olive had been that champion. She had stood in the field of honor on my behalf.
But I had been young then. I wasn’t young anymore. I would have to do this myself. But what would an adult—a formed person, a person of honor—do in this circumstance?
Face the music, I suppose. Fight her own corner, as Winchell had said. Forgive somebody, perhaps.
But how?
Then I remembered what Peg had told me years earlier, about the British army engineers during the Great War, who used to say: “We can do it, whether it can be done or not.”
Eventually, all of us will be called upon to do the thing that cannot be done.
That is the painful field, Angela.
That is what caused me to reach for the phone.
Your father was already at the park when I arrived, Angela—and I was early, and had only three blocks to walk.
He was pacing before the fountain. I’m sure you remember the way he used to pace. He was dressed in civilian clothes: brown wool pants, a light blue nylon sports shirt, and a dark green Harrington jacket. The clothing hung loosely on his frame. He was awfully thin.
I approached him. “Hi, there.”
“Hello,” he said.
I wasn’t certain if I should shake his hand. He didn’t seem sure of protocol, either, so we did nothing but stand with our hands in our pockets. I’d never seen a man more uncomfortable.
I gestured to a bench and asked, “Would you care to sit down and talk with me for a moment?”
I felt stupid—as though I were offering him a chair in my own home, rather than a seat in a public park.
He said, “I’m not good at sitting down. If you don’t mind, can we walk?”
“I don’t mind at all.”
We started walking the perimeter of the park, under the lindens and the elms. He had a long stride, but that was fine—so do I.
“Frank,” I said, “I apologize for running off the other day.”
“No, I apologize to you.”
“No, I should have stayed and heard you out. That would’ve been the mature thing to do. But you have to understand—meeting you again after all these years gave me quite a start.”
“I knew you would walk away when you found out who I was. You should have.”
“Look, Frank—all that was long ago.”
“I was a stupid kid,” he said. He stopped and turned to face me. “Who the hell did I think I was, talking to you like that?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“I had no right. I was such a stupid goddamn kid.”
“If we’re going to get down to brass tacks about it,” I said, “I was just a stupid kid, too. I was surely the stupidest kid in New York City that week. You may recall the details of the situation in which I had found myself?”
I was attempting to introduce a little levity, but Frank was all business.
“All I was trying to do was impress your brother, Vivian—you gotta believe that. He’d never talked to me before that day—never took notice of me at all. And why would he talk to me—a popular guy like him? Then all of a sudden, there he is waking me up in the middle of the night. Frank, I need your car. I was the only guy at OCS with a car. He knew that. Everyone knew that. Guys were always wanting to borrow my car. Well, the thing is—it wasn’t my car, Vivian. It was my old man’s car. I was allowed to use it, but I couldn’t give it to anyone. Here I am, middle of the night, talking to Walter Morris for the first time—a guy I admire with all my heart—telling him that I can’t give him my old man’s car. I’m trying to explain all this from a dead sleep, and I don’t even know what it’s all about.”
As Frank spoke, his native accent thickened. It was as if, by going back in time, he was going back deeper into himself—even deeper into his Brooklyn-ness.
“It’s all right, Frank,” I said. “It’s over.”
“Vivian, you gotta let me say this. You gotta let me tell you how sorry I am. For years, I wanted to find you, tell you I was sorry. But I didn’t have the courage to look for you. Please, you gotta let me tell you how it happened. See, I told Walter, I can’t help you, buddy. Then he deals me the facts. Tells me his sister’s gone and got herself in trouble. He needs to get her out of the city, pronto. He says I gotta help him save his sister. What was I gonna do, Vivian? Say no? It was Walter Morris. You know how he was.”
I did. I knew how he was.
Nobody ever said no to my brother.
“So I tell him the only way I can lend him the car is if I drive. Thinking to myself, How am I gonna explain the mileage to my old man. Thinking to myself, Maybe me and Walter will be friends after this. Thinking, How are we gonna just walk away from OCS like this, in the middle of the night? But Walter sorted it all out. Got permission from the commander for both of us to leave for a day—for twenty-four hours only. No one but Walter who could’ve gotten that permission in the middle of the night, but he did it. I don’t know what he had to say, or promise, to get that leave, but he got it. Next thing I know, we’re in midtown, and I’m throwing your suitcases in my old man’s car, getting ready to drive six hours, to a town I’ve never heard of, for what reason I don’t even know. I don’t even know who you are, but you’re the prettiest-looking girl I ever saw in my lif
e.”
There was nothing flirtatious in the way he said this. He was just relaying the facts, cop that he was.
“Now we’re in the car, I’m driving, and then Walter starts giving you the fifth degree. I never heard anyone go at someone as hard as that. What am I supposed to do while he’s reaming you out? Where am I supposed to go? I can’t be hearing all this. I’ve never been in a situation like this. I’m from South Brooklyn, Vivian, and it can be a tough neighborhood, but you gotta understand—I’m a bookish kid, I’m a shy kid. I don’t get involved in fights. I’m the kind of kid who keeps his head down. Something goes on, people start yelling, I leave the scene. But I can’t leave this scene, ’cause I’m driving. And he wasn’t yelling—even though I think it might’ve been better if he was yelling. He was just taking you apart, so cold. Do you remember that?”
Oh, I remembered.
“Add to it all, I don’t know anything about women. The things he was talking about, the things he said you were up to? I don’t know anything about all that. And your picture is in the papers, he says—a picture of you messing around with two people? One of them is a movie star of some kind? Another one is a showgirl? I never heard of anything like that. But he just keeps going at you and going at you—and you’re just there in the backseat, smoking cigarettes and taking it. I look in the rearview mirror, you aren’t even blinking. It’s like water off a duck’s back, everything he’s saying to you. I could see it was making Walter crazy, that you weren’t responding. That was just firing him up more. But I swear to God, I never saw anyone looking so coolheaded as you.”
“I wasn’t coolheaded, Frank,” I said. “I was in shock.”
“Well, whatever it was, you kept your cool. Like you didn’t even care. Meanwhile, I’m sweating bullets, wondering, is this how you people talk all the time? Is this what rich people are like?”
City of Girls Page 38
