City of Girls

If I’d been more wise and attentive, I might have realized that America was eventually going to get pulled into this conflagration. I might have taken more notice of the news that my brother was thinking about joining the Navy. I might have worried about what that decision would mean for Walter’s future—and for all of us. And I might have realized that some of the fun young men with whom I was cavorting every night in New York City were just the right age to be put on the front lines when America inevitably did enter this war. If I’d known then what I know now—namely: that so many of those beautiful young boys would soon be lost to the battlefields of Europe or to the infernos of the South Pacific—I would have had sex with even more of them.

If it sounds like I’m being facetious, I’m not.

I wish I’d done more of everything with those boys. (I’m not sure when I would have found the time, of course, but I would’ve made every effort to squeeze into my busy schedule every last one of those kids—so many of whom were soon to be shattered, burned, wounded, doomed.)

I only wish I had known what was coming, Angela.

I truly do.

—

Other people were paying attention, though. Olive followed the news coming out of her home country of England with particular concern. She was anxious about it, but then again, she was anxious about everything, so her worries didn’t make much of an impression. Olive sat there every morning over her breakfast of kidney and eggs, reading every bit of coverage she could get. She read The New York Times, and Barron’s, and the Herald Tribune (even though it leaned Republican), and she read the British papers when she could find them. Even my Aunt Peg (who usually read only the Post, for the baseball coverage) had started following the news with more concern. She’d already seen one world war, and she didn’t want to see another. Peg’s loyalties to Europe would forever run deep.

Over the course of that summer, both Peg and Olive became increasingly passionate in their belief that the Americans must join the war effort. Somebody had to help out the British and rescue the French! Peg and Olive were in full support of the president as he tried to garner backing from Congress to take action.

Peg—a traitor to her class—had always loved Roosevelt. This had been shocking to me when I’d first heard about it; my father hated Roosevelt and was a vehement isolationist. A real pro-Lindbergh sort of fellow, was old Dad. I assumed that all my relatives hated Roosevelt, too. But this was New York City, I guess, where people thought differently about things.

“I’ve reached my limit with the Nazis!” I remember Peg shouting one morning over breakfast and the newspapers. She slammed her fist on the table in a burst of rage. “That’s enough of them! They must be stopped! What are we waiting for?”

I’d never heard Peg get so upset about anything, which is why it stuck in my memory. Her reaction pierced my self-absorption for a moment and made me take notice: Gee whiz, if Peg was this angry, things really must be getting bad!

That said, I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to do about the Nazis, personally.

The truth was, I didn’t have any inkling that this war—this distant, irritating war—might have any real consequences until September of 1940.

That’s when Edna and Arthur Watson moved into the Lily Playhouse.

NINE

I’m going to assume, Angela, that you’ve never heard of Edna Parker Watson.

You’re probably a bit too young to know of her great theatrical career. She was always better known in London than New York, in any case.

As it happens, I had heard of Edna before I met her—but that’s only because she was married to a handsome English screen actor named Arthur Watson, who had recently played the heartthrob in a cheesy British war movie called Gates of Noon. I’d seen their photos in the magazines, so Edna was familiar to me. Now, this was a bit of a crime—to have known Edna only through her husband. She was by far the superior performer of the two, and the superior human being, besides. But that’s just how it goes. His was the prettier face, and in this shallow world a pretty face means everything.

It might have helped if Edna made movies. Maybe then she would’ve achieved greater fame in her day, and maybe she’d even be remembered now—like Bette Davis or Vivien Leigh, who were every bit her peers. But she refused to act for the camera. It wasn’t for lack of opportunity; Hollywood came knocking on her door many times, but somehow she never lost the stamina to keep turning down those big-shot film producers. Edna wouldn’t even do radio plays, believing that the human voice loses something vital and sacred when it is recorded.