City of Girls

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.