City of Girls (13 page)

“Gee, thanks!” said Celia, parading around Edna’s room, searching for a mirror.

“I can’t think why I ever bought that scarf in the first place, girls. I suppose I bought it during a year when yellow scarves were in fashion. And let that be a lesson to you! The
thing about fashion, my dears, is that you don’t
need
to follow it, no matter what they say. No fashion trend is compulsory, remember—and if you dress too much in the style of the moment, it makes you look like a nervous person. Paris is all well and good, but we can’t just follow Paris for the sake of Paris, now can we?”

We can’t just follow Paris for the sake of Paris!

As long as I live, I
shall never forget those words. That speech was certainly more stirring to me than anything Churchill had ever said.

Celia and I were now busy unpacking a trunk filled with the most delicious items of bath and beauty—articles of
toilette
that made us swoon with joy. There were carnation-scented bath oils, lavender alcohol rubs, pomander balls to spice up the drawers and closets, and so many alluring
glass vials of lotions with French instructions. It was positively
intoxicating
. I would have been embarrassed by our overenthusiasm, but Edna seemed to be genuinely enjoying our squeaks and squeals of delight. In fact, she seemed to be having just as much fun as we were. I had the craziest sensation that Edna might actually like us. This was interesting to me then, and it is still interesting
now. Older women don’t always relish the company of beautiful young girls, for obvious reasons. But not Edna.

“Girls,” she said, “I could watch the two of you effervesce for hours!”

And boy, did we effervesce. I’d never seen such a wardrobe. Edna even had a valise filled with nothing but gloves—each pair wrapped lovingly in its own silk.

“Never buy inexpensive or poorly made gloves,” Edna instructed
us. “That’s not the place to save your money. Whenever you are faced with the prospect of purchasing gloves, you must ask yourself if you would be
bereft
to lose one of them in the back of a taxicab. If not, then don’t buy them. You should only buy gloves so beautiful that to lose one of them would break your heart.”

At some point, Edna’s husband walked in, but he was inconsequential (handsome
as he was) compared to this exotic wardrobe. She kissed his cheek and sent him on his way, saying, “There’s no room in here yet for a man, Arthur. Go have a drink somewhere and entertain yourself until these dear girls are done, and then I
promise
I’ll find space for you and your one sorry little duffel bag.”

He sulked a bit, but did her bidding.

After he left, Celia said, “Say, but he’s a looker,
ain’t he!”

I thought Edna might be offended, but she only laughed. “He is indeed, as you say, a
looker
. I’ve never before seen his like, to be candid with you. We’ve been married nearly a decade, and I haven’t grown tired of looking at him yet.”

“But he’s
young
.”

I could’ve kicked Celia for her rudeness, but Edna, again, didn’t seem to mind. “Yes, dear Celia. He is young—far younger than me,
in fact. One of my greatest achievements, I daresay.”

“You don’t get worried?” Celia pressed on. “There’s gotta be a lot of young dishes out there who want to put the moves on him.”

“I don’t worry about dishes, my dear. Dishes break.”

“Ooh!” said Celia, and her face lit up with something like awe.

“When you have found your own success as a woman,” explained Edna, “you may do such a fun thing
as marry a handsome man who is very much your junior. Consider it a reward for all your hard work. When first I met Arthur, he was just a boy—a set carpenter for an Ibsen play I was doing.
An Enemy of the People
. I was Mrs. Stockmann, and oh, it’s a dull role. But meeting Arthur livened things up for me during the run of that play—and he has kept things lively for me since. I’m awfully fond of
him, girls. He’s my third husband, of course. Nobody’s first husband looks like Arthur. My first husband was a civil servant, and I don’t mind saying that he made love like a civil servant, too. My second husband was a theater director. I won’t make
that
mistake again. And now there is dear Arthur, so handsome and yet so cozy. My gift, till the end of my days. I’m so fond of him that I even took
his name—though my theater friends warned me not to, since my own name was already well known. I’d never taken the names of any of my other husbands before, you see. But Edna Parker Watson has a nice ring to it, don’t you agree? And what about you, Celia? Have you ever had any husbands?”

I wanted to say:
She’s had many husbands, Edna—but only one of them was her own
.

“Yeah,” said Celia. “I had
a husband once. He played the saxophone.”

“Oh, dear. So we may assume that didn’t last?”

“Yeah, you guessed it, lady.” Celia drew a line across her own throat, to indicate, I guess, the death of love.

“And what about you, Vivian? Married? Engaged?”

“No,” I said.

“Anybody special?”

“Nobody
special,
” I said, and something about the way I uttered the word “special” made Edna burst out laughing.

“Ah, but you have a
somebody,
I can see.”

“She has a few somebodies,” Celia said, and I couldn’t help but smile.

“Good work, Vivian!” Edna gave me an appraising second look. “You’re growing more interesting to me by the moment!”

Later on in the evening—it must have been well after midnight by then—Peg came in to check on us. She settled into a deep chair with a nightcap in her hand and watched
with pleasure as Celia and I finished unpacking Edna’s trunks.

“Gadzooks, Edna,” Peg said. “You have a
lot
of clothes.”

“This is a mere fraction of the collection, Peg. You should see my wardrobe back home.” She paused. “Oh, dear. I’ve just now remembered again that I’ve
lost
everything back home. My contribution to the war effort, I suppose. Evidently Mr. Goering needed to destroy my more-than-three-decades-i
n-the-making costume collection as part of his plan for making the world safe for the Aryan race. I don’t quite see how it
served
him, but the sad deed is done.”

I marveled at how lightly she seemed to take the destruction of her home. So, apparently, did Peg, who said, “I must admit, Edna, I was expecting to find you a bit more shaken up by all this.”

“Oh, Peg, you know me better than that!
Or have you forgotten how good I am at adjusting to circumstances? You can’t lead the sort of patched-together life that I’ve lived and get too sentimental about things.”

Peg grinned. “Show people,” she said to me, shaking her head with an insider’s appreciation.

Celia had just now pulled out an elegant floor-length, high-necked, black crepe gown with long sleeves, and a small pearl brooch set
deliberately off center.

“Now
that’s
something,” said Celia.

“You would think so, wouldn’t you?” said Edna, holding the dress up to herself. “But I’ve had a difficult relationship with this dress. Black can be the smartest of colors, or it can be the dowdiest, depending on the line. I wore this gown only once, and I felt like a Greek widow in it. But I’ve kept it because I like the pearl detail.”

I approached the dress, respectfully. “May I?” I asked.

Edna handed me the dress and I laid it out on the couch, touching it here and there, and getting a better sense of it.

“The problem isn’t the color,” I diagnosed. “The problem is the sleeves. The material of the sleeves is heavier than the material of the bodice—can you see that? This dress should have chiffon sleeves—or none at all, which
would be better for you, petite as you are.”

Edna studied the gown and then looked at me with surprise.

“I believe you’re on to something there, Vivian.”

“I could fix it for you, if you’ll trust me with it.”

“Our Vivvie can sew like the devil!” Celia said, proudly.

“It’s true,” put in Peg. “Vivian is our resident dress professor.”

“She makes all the costumes for the shows,” said Celia. “She
made the ballet tutus everyone was wearing tonight.”

“Did you?” said Edna, more impressed than she should’ve been. (Your cat could sew a tutu, Angela.) “So you’re not only beautiful, but gifted as well? Imagine that! And they say the Lord never gives with both hands!”

I shrugged. “All I know is that I can fix this. I would shorten it, as well. It would be better for you if it landed at mid-ankle.”

“Well, it appears as if you know a good deal more about clothes than I do,” said Edna, “because I was ready to relegate this poor old gown to the ash heap. And here I’ve been, filling your ears all night with my noise and opinions about fashion and style. I should be the one listening to
you
. So tell me, my dear—where did you learn how to understand a dress so well?”

I can’t imagine that it was
fascinating for a woman of Edna Parker Watson’s stature to listen to a nineteen-year-old girl blather on about her grandmother for the next several hours, but that’s exactly what happened, and she bore it nobly. More than nobly—she hung on every word.

Somewhere during the course of my monologue, Celia wandered out of the room. I wouldn’t see her again until just before dawn, when she would come
tumbling into our bed at the usual hour, in her usual state of drunken disarray. Peg ended up excusing herself, as well—once she got a sharp knock on the door and a reminder from Olive that it was past her bedtime.

So it ended up being just me and Edna—curled up on the couch of her new apartment at the Lily—talking into the wee hours. The well-raised girl within me did not want to monopolize
her time, but I could not resist her attentions. Edna wanted to know everything about my grandmother and delighted in the details of her frivolities and eccentricities. (“What a character! She should be put in a play!”) Every time I tried to turn the subject of the conversation away from myself, Edna would turn it back to me. She expressed sincere curiosity about my love of sewing and was astonished
when I told her that I could make a whalebone corset if I had to.

“Then you’re born to be a costume designer!” she said. “The difference between making a dress and making a costume, of course, is that dresses are sewn, but costumes are
built
. Many people these days can sew, but not many know how to
build
. A costume is a prop for the stage, Vivvie, as much as any piece of furniture, and it needs
to be strong. You never know what’s going to happen in a performance, and so the costume must be ready for anything.”

I told Edna about how my grandmother used to find the tiniest
hidden flaws in my outfits and demand that I fix the offending article on the spot. I used to protest that “Nobody will notice!” but Grandmother Morris would say, “That is not true, Vivian. People
will
notice, but they
won’t know what they’re noticing. They will just notice that something is wrong. Don’t give them that opportunity.”

“She was correct!” said Edna. “This is why I take such care with my costumes. I hate it when an impatient director says, ‘Nobody will notice!’ Oh, the arguments I’ve had about that! As I always tell the director: ‘If you put me in a spotlight with three hundred audience members
staring at me for two hours, they will
notice a flaw
. They will notice flaws in my hair, flaws in my complexion, flaws in my voice, and they will absolutely notice flaws in my dress.’ It’s not that the audience members are masters of style, Vivian: it’s merely that they have nothing else to do with their time
,
once they are held captive in their seats,
except
to notice your flaws.”

I thought
I’d been having adult conversations all summer, because I’d been spending my time around such a worldly group of showgirls, but this was
truly
an adult conversation. This was a conversation about craftsmanship, and about expertise, and about aesthetics. Nobody I’d ever met (except Grandmother Morris, of course) had ever known more about dressmaking than me. Nobody had ever cared this much. Nobody
understood or respected the
art
of it.

I could have stayed there talking to Edna about clothing and costumes for another century or two, but Arthur Watson finally burst in and demanded that he be allowed to go to
ruddy bed
with his
ruddy wife,
and that put an end to it.

The next day marked the first morning in two months that I did not wake up with a hangover.

TEN

By the next week, my Aunt Peg had already begun creating a show for Edna to star in. She was determined to give her friend a job, and it had to be a better job than what the Lily Playhouse currently had to offer—because you can’t very well put one of the greatest actresses of her age in
Dance Away, Jackie!

As for Olive, she was not convinced this was a good idea in the least. As much as
she loved Edna, it didn’t make sense to her from a business standpoint to attempt to put on a decent (or even halfway decent) show at the Lily: it would break formula.

“We have a small audience, Peg,” she said. “And they are humble. But they are the only audience we have, and they are loyal to us. We must be loyal to them in return. We can’t leave them behind for one play—certainly not for one
player—
or they may never come back. Our task is to serve the neighborhood. And the neighborhood doesn’t want Ibsen.”

“I don’t want Ibsen, either,” said Peg. “But I hate seeing Edna sitting
about idle, and I hate even more the idea of putting her in any of our draggy little shows.”

“However
draggy
our shows may be, they keep the electricity on, Peg. And just barely, at that. Don’t chance it, by
changing anything.”

“We could make a comedy,” Peg said. “Something that our audiences would like. But it would have to be smart enough to be worthy of Edna.”

She turned to Mr. Herbert, who had been sitting there at the breakfast table in his usual attire of baggy trousers and shirtsleeves, staring sorrowfully at nothing.

“Mr. Herbert,” Peg asked, “do you think you could write a play that is
both funny and smart?”

“No,” he said, without even looking up.

“Well, what are you working on now? What’s the next show on deck?”

“It’s called
City of Girls,
” he said. “I told you about it last month.”

“The speakeasy one,” said Peg. “I remember. Flappers and gangsters, and that sort of fluff. What’s it about, again, exactly?”

Mr. Herbert looked both wounded and confused. “What’s it
about
?” he asked. It seemed that this was the first time he’d considered that one of the Lily Playhouse shows should be
about
something.

“Never mind,” said Peg. “Does it have a role that Edna could play?”

Again, he looked wounded and confused.

“I don’t see how it could,” he said. “We have an ingénue, and a hero. We have a villain. We don’t have an older woman.”

“Could the ingénue have a mother?”

“Peg, she’s an
orphan,
” said Mr. Herbert. “You can’t change that.”

I saw his point: the ingénue always had to be an orphan. The story wouldn’t make sense if the ingénue wasn’t an orphan. The audience would revolt. The audience would start throwing shoes and bricks at the players if the ingénue wasn’t an orphan.

“Who’s the owner of the speakeasy, in your show?”

“The speakeasy doesn’t have an
owner.”

“Well, could it? And could it be a woman?”

Mr. Herbert rubbed his forehead and looked overwhelmed. He looked as though Peg had just asked him to repaint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

“This causes problems in all aspects,” he said.

Olive chimed in: “Nobody will believe Edna Parker Watson as the owner of a speakeasy, Peg. Why would the owner of a New York speakeasy be from England?”

Peg’s face fell. “Blast it, you’re right, Olive. You have such a bad habit of being right all the time. I wish you wouldn’t do that.” Peg sat in silence for a long moment, thinking hard. Then suddenly she said, “Goddamn it, but I wish I had Billy here. He could write something smashing for Edna.”

Well,
that
caught my attention.

This was the first time I’d ever heard my aunt curse, for one thing.
But this was also the first time I’d ever heard her mention her estranged husband’s name. And I wasn’t the only one who snapped to fullest attention at the mere mention of Billy Buell’s name, either. Both Olive and Mr. Herbert looked as though they’d just had buckets of ice poured down their backs.

“Oh, Peg, no,” said Olive. “Don’t call Billy. Please, be sensible.”

“I can add whoever you want
me to add to the cast,” said Mr. Herbert, suddenly cooperative. “Just tell me what you need me to do, and I’ll do it. The speakeasy can have an owner, sure. She can be from England, too.”

“Billy was so fond of Edna.” Peg seemed to be talking to herself now. “And he’s seen her perform. He’ll understand how best to use her.”

“You don’t want Billy involved in anything we do, Peg,” warned Olive.

“I’ll call him. Just to get some ideas from him. The man is made of ideas.”

“It’s five
A.M.
on the West Coast,” said Mr. Herbert. “You can’t call him!”

This was fascinating to watch. The level of anxiety in the room had risen to an undeniably hot pitch, merely with the introduction of Billy’s name.

“I’ll call him this afternoon, then,” said Peg. “Though we can’t be sure he’ll be awake by then,
either.”

“Oh, Peg,
no,
” said Olive again, sinking into what looked like leaden despair.

“Just to get some ideas from him, Olive,” said Peg. “There’s no harm done with a phone call. I need him, Olive. Like I say: the man is made of ideas.”

That night after the show, Peg took a whole lot of us to dinner at Dinty Moore’s on Forty-sixth Street. She was triumphant. She had spoken to Billy that afternoon
and wanted to tell everyone about his ideas for the play.

I was there at that dinner, the Watsons were there, Mr. Herbert was there, Benjamin the piano player was there (first time I’d ever seen him out of the house), and Celia was there, too, because Celia and I were always together.

Peg said, “Now, listen, everyone. Billy’s got it all figured out. We’re going to put on
City of Girls
after
all, and we’re setting it during Prohibition. It will be a comedy, of course. Edna—you will play the owner of the speakeasy. But in order for the story to make sense and be funny, Billy says we’re going to have to make you into an aristocrat, so that your natural refinement will make sense onstage. Your character will be a
woman of means who ended up in the bootlegging business somewhat accidentally.
Billy suggests that your husband died, and then you lost all your money in the stock market crash. Then you start distilling gin and running a casino in your fancy home, as a way of getting by. That way, Edna, you can keep the gentility for which you are known and loved, while at the same time being part of a comic revue with showgirls and dancers—which is the kind of thing our audience likes.
I think it’s brilliant. Billy thinks it would be funny if the nightclub was a bordello, too.”

Olive frowned. “I don’t like the idea of our play being set in a bordello.”

“I do!” said Edna, shining with glee. “I love all of it! I’ll be the madam of a bordello
and
the owner of a speakeasy. How pleasing! You can’t imagine what a
balm
it will be for me to do a comedy, after so long. The last four
plays I’ve been in, I was either a fallen woman who murdered her lover, or a long-suffering wife whose husband was murdered by a fallen woman. It wears on one, the
drama
.”

Peg was beaming. “Say what you want about Billy, but the man is a genius.”

Olive looked as though there was a
lot
she wanted to say about Billy, but she kept it to herself.

Peg turned her attention to our piano player. “Benjamin,
I need you to make the music
exceptionally
good for this show. Edna’s got a fine alto, and I would like to hear that voice filling up the Lily properly. Give her songs that are snappier than those mushy ballads I normally make you write. Or steal something from Cole Porter, the way you do sometimes. But make it
good
. I want this show to swing.”

“I don’t steal from Cole Porter,” said Benjamin.
“I don’t steal from anyone.”

“Don’t you? I always thought you did, because your music
sounds
so much like Cole Porter’s music.”

“Well, I’m not quite sure how to take that,” said Benjamin.

Peg shrugged. “Maybe Cole Porter’s been stealing from
you,
Benjamin—who knows? Just write some terrific tunes, is what I’m saying. And be sure to give Edna a showstopper.”

Then she turned to Celia and said,
“Celia, I’d like you to play the ingénue.”

Mr. Herbert looked like he was about to interrupt, but Peg impatiently waved him into silence.

“No, everyone, listen to me. This is a different sort of ingénue. I don’t want our heroine this time to be some little saucer-eyed orphan girl in a white dress. I’m imagining our girl as being extremely provocative in the way she walks and talks—that would
be you, Celia—but still untarnished by the world, in a way. Sexy, but with an air of innocence about her.”

“A whore with a heart of gold,” said Celia, who was smarter than she looked.

“Exactly,” said Peg.

Edna touched Celia’s arm gently. “Let’s just call your character a
soiled dove
.”

“Sure, I can play that.” Celia reached for another pork chop. “Mr. Herbert, how many lines do I get?”

“I
don’t know!” said Mr. Herbert, looking more and more unhappy. “I don’t know how to write a . . . soiled dove.”

“I can make up some stuff for you,” offered Celia—a true dramatist, that one.

Peg turned to Edna. “Do you know what Billy said when I told him that you were here, Edna? He said, ‘Oh, how I envy New York City right now.’”

“
Did
he?”

“He did, that flirt. He also said: ‘Watch out, because
you never
know what you’ll get with Edna onstage: some nights she’s excellent, other nights she’s perfect.’”

Edna beamed. “That’s so sweet of him. Nobody could ever make a woman feel more attractive than Billy could—sometimes for upwards of ten consecutive minutes. But, Peg, I must ask: Do you have a role for Arthur?”

“Of course I do,” said Peg—and I knew in that moment that she did
not
have
a role for Arthur. In fact, it was pretty clear to me that she’d forgotten about Arthur’s existence entirely. But there was Arthur, sitting there in all his simpleminded handsomeness, waiting for his role like a Labrador retriever waits for a ball.

“Of course I have a role for Arthur,” Peg said. “I want him to play”—she hesitated, but only for the
briefest
moment (you might not have even noticed
the hesitation, if you didn’t know Peg)—“the policeman. Yes, Arthur, I plan for you to play the policeman who’s always trying to shut down the speakeasy, and who’s in love with Edna’s character. Do you think you could manage an American accent?”

“I can manage
any
accent,” said Arthur, miffed—and I instantly knew that he absolutely could not manage an American accent.

“A policeman!” Edna clapped
her hands. “And you’ll be in love with
me,
dear! What larks.”

“I didn’t hear anything before about a policeman character,” said Mr. Herbert.

“Oh, no, Mr. Herbert,” said Peg. “The policeman has always been in the script.”

“What script?”

“The script you’ll commence writing tomorrow morning, at break of day.”

Mr. Herbert looked like he was about to be afflicted with a nervous disorder.

“Do
I get a song of my own to sing?” asked Arthur.

“Oh,” said Peg. There was that pause again. “
Yes
. Benjamin, do be sure to write that song for Arthur, which we discussed. The policeman’s song, please.”

Benjamin held Peg’s gaze and repeated with only the
slightest
sarcasm: “The policeman’s song.”

“That’s correct, Benjamin. As we’ve already discussed.”

“Shall I just steal a policeman’s song from
Gershwin, perhaps?”

But Peg was already turning her attention to me.

“Costumes!” she said brightly, and scarcely had the word left her mouth before Olive declared, “There will be virtually no budget for costumes.”

Peg’s face dropped. “Drat. I’d forgotten about that.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “I’ll buy everything at Lowtsky’s. Flapper dresses are simple.”

“Brilliant, Vivian,” said Peg.
“I know you’ll take care of it.”

“On a strict budget,” Olive added.

“On a strict budget,” I agreed. “I’ll even throw in my own allowance if I have to.”

As the conversation continued, with everyone except Mr. Herbert getting more excited and making suggestions for the show, I excused myself to the powder room. When I came out, I almost ran into a good-looking young man with a wide tie and a
rather wolfish expression, who’d been waiting for me in the corridor.

“Say, there, your friend’s a knockout,” he said, nodding in the direction of Celia. “And so are you.”

“That’s what we’ve been told,” I replied, holding his gaze.

“You girls wanna come home with me?” he asked, dispensing with the preliminaries. “I gotta friend with a car.”

I studied him more closely. He looked like a piece
of very bad business. A wolf with an agenda. This was not somebody a nice girl should tangle with.

“We might,” I said, which was true. “But first we have a meeting to conclude, with our associates.”

“Your
associates
?” he scoffed, taking in our table with its odd and animated assortment of humanity: a coronary-inducingly gorgeous showgirl, a slovenly white-haired man in his shirtsleeves, a tall
and dowdy middle-aged woman, a short and stodgy middle-aged woman, a stylishly dressed lady of means, a strikingly handsome man with a dramatic profile, and an elegant young black man in a perfectly tailored pinstripe suit. “What line of business yous in, doll?”

“We’re theater people,” I said.

As if we could have been anything else.

The following morning I woke up early as usual, suffering
from my typical summer-of-1940 hangover. My hair stank of sweat and cigarettes, and my limbs were all tangled up in Celia’s limbs. (We had gone out with the wolf and his friend, after all—as I’m sure you’ll be flabbergasted beyond all reason to hear—and it had been a strenuous night. I felt like I’d just been fished out of the Gowanus Canal.)