maleness. They each had a lot of pride and a lot of machismo, which made every room in New York City too small for the both of them.
Finally it all came to a head one night when a group of us had gone out for drinks at Sardi’s after the show. Anthony had been manhandling me at the bar (to my delight and pleasure, of course) when he caught Walter giving him the stink-eye. Next thing I knew, the two young men were chest to chest.
“You want me to back outta this deal with your sister, dontcha?” Anthony demanded, pushing a little farther into Walter’s space. “Well, just you try to make me do it, captain.”
The way Anthony was grinning at Walter in that moment—leering, really—had an unmistakable edge of threat. For the first time, I could see the Hell’s Kitchen street fighter in my boyfriend. It was also the first time I’d ever seen Anthony look like he cared about something. And in that moment, what he cared about was not me—but the pleasure of punching my brother in the face.
Walter held Anthony’s gaze without blinking and replied in a low tone, “If you’re trying to take a crack at me, son, don’t do it with words.”
I watched Anthony size up my brother—taking note of the football shoulders and the wrestling neck—and think better of it. Anthony dropped his eyes and backed down. He gave a careless laugh and said, “We got no beef here, captain. You’re all right, you’re all right.”
Then he slid back into his customary air of nonchalance and stepped away.
Anthony had made the right call. My brother, Walter, was many things (an elitist, a puritan, and uptight as all hell), but he was not a weakling and he was not a coward.
My brother could’ve pounded my boyfriend straight into the pavement.
Anyone could see that.
—
The next day, Walter took me out to lunch at the Colony so that we could “have a talk.”
I knew exactly what (or, rather, whom) this talk was going to be about, and I dreaded it.
“Please don’t tell Mother and Dad about Anthony,” I asked Walter as soon as we sat down at our table. I hated to even bring up the subject of my boyfriend, but I knew that Walter would, and I figured my best bet was to start off with a plea for my life. My biggest fear was that he was going to report my misdoings to my parents, and that they would barrel right down upon me and clip my wings.
It took awhile for him to answer.
“I want to be fair about this, Vee,” he said.
Of course he did. Walter always wanted to be fair.
I waited, feeling the way I often did with Walter—like a child who has just been called before the headmaster. God, how I wished he was my ally! But he had never been. Even as a boy, he’d never kept a secret for me or conspired with me against the adults. He’d always been an extension of my parents. He’d always behaved more like a father than a peer. Moreover, I’d treated him as such.
Finally he said, “You can’t fool around like this forever, you know.”
“Oh, I know,” I said—although my actual plan, in point of fact, was to fool around like this forever.
“There’s a real world out there, Vee. You’re going to have to put away the balloons and streamers at some point and grow up.”
“Without a doubt,” I agreed.
“You were raised right. I have to trust in that. When the time comes, your breeding will kick in. You’re playing the bohemian now, but eventually you’ll settle down and marry the correct kind of person.”
“Of course I will.” I nodded as though this were my plan precisely.
“If I didn’t believe that you had good sense, I would send you back home to Clinton right now.”
“I don’t blame you!” I cried, in fullest agreement. “If I didn’t believe that I had good sense, I would send myself back home to Clinton right now.”
Which didn’t particularly make sense, but seemed to mollify him. I knew my brother well enough, thank God, to know that my only hope for salvation was to agree with him completely.
“It’s kind of like when I went to Delaware,” he said, softening a bit, after another long silence.
This stopped me up. Delaware? Then I remembered that my brother had spent a few weeks the previous summer in Delaware. He’d been working at a power plant, if I recalled, learning something about electrical engineering.
“Of course!” I said. “Delaware!” I wanted to encourage this positivesounding track—although I had no idea what he was referring to.
“Some of the people I spent time with in Delaware were pretty rough,” he said. “But you know how that is. Sometimes you want to rub elbows with people who weren’t raised the same way as you. Expand your horizons. Maybe it builds character.”
Well, that was pretentious.
Encouragingly, though, he smiled.
I smiled, too. I tried to look like someone who was busy expanding her horizons and building her character through intentional fraternization with her social inferiors. A difficult look to master in a single facial expression, but I did my best.
“You’re just having your kicks,” he decided, sounding as though he were almost convinced of this diagnosis himself. “It’s innocent enough.”
“That’s right, Walter. I’m just having my kicks. You don’t have to worry about me.”
His face darkened. I’d made a tactical error; I had contradicted him.
“Well, I do have to worry about you, Vee, because I’m starting Officer Candidate School in a few days. I’ll be moving to the battleship uptown, and I won’t be around to keep an eye on you anymore.”
Hallelujah, I thought, while nodding gravely.
“I don’t like the direction I see your life heading in,” he said. “That’s what I wanted to tell you today. I don’t like it at all.”
“I can certainly understand that!” I said, going back to my original strategy of absolute accordance.
“Tell me there’s nothing serious for you about this Anthony fellow.”
“Nothing,” I lied.
“You haven’t crossed the line with him?”
I could feel myself blush. It wasn’t a blush of modesty, but of guilt. Still, it worked in my favor. I must have looked like an innocent girl, embarrassed that her brother had mentioned the subject of sex— however obliquely.
Walter flushed, too. “I’m sorry I had to ask,” he said, protecting my perceived guilelessness. “But I need to know.”
“I understand,” I said. “But I would never . . . not with that kind of guy. Not with anybody, Walter.”
“All right, then. If you say so, I trust you. I won’t say anything to Mother and Dad about Anthony,” he said. (I took my first easy breath of the day.) “But you have to promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“If you get into any trouble with this fellow, you will call me.”
“I will,” I swore. “But I won’t get into any trouble. I promise.”
Suddenly, Walter looked old. It could not have been easy, being a twenty-two-year-old elder statesman on his way to war. Trying to uphold his familial duties and his patriotic duties all at the same time.
“I know you’ll end this thing with Anthony soon, Vee. Just promise me you’ll be smart. I know what a smart kid you are. You wouldn’t do anything reckless. You’ve got too good a head on your shoulders for that.”
My heart broke a little in that moment—watching my brother dig so deep into his pristine imagination, desperately searching for ways to think the best of me.
EIGHTEEN
Angela, I don’t want to tell you this next part of the story.
It’s painful, this next part.
Let me stall a little while longer.
No, let me get it over with.
—
Now it was the end of March 1941.
It had been a long winter. New York had been hit with a murderous snowstorm earlier in the month, and it took the city weeks to dig out from under it. We were all sick of being cold. The Lily was a drafty old building, you may be amazed to learn, and the dressing rooms were better suited to storing furs than warming human beings.
We all had chilblains and cold sores. All of us girls were longing to wear our cute spring frocks and to show our figures again, instead of being mummified in overcoats, galoshes, and scarves. I’d seen some of our dancers going out on the town with long underwear under their gowns—which they furtively took off in the bathrooms of nightclubs, and then just as furtively put back on again at the end of the evening, before braving the freezing night air. Believe me, there is nothing glamorous about a girl in a silk gown and long underwear. I’d been feverishly sewing new spring clothes for myself all winter—in the irrational hope that if my wardrobe was more summery, the weather would be, too.
Finally, toward the end of the month, the weather broke and the cold spell lifted a bit.