Then it was time for our little show.
—
Ihad been asked by the commissioner of the Navy Yard to introduce myself and to explain our skit. I’m not crazy about public speaking, but I managed to pull through it without bringing down ruin upon my head. I told the audience who I was, and what my role had been at the Yard during the war. I made a joke about the poor quality of food at the Sammy cafeteria, which earned a few scattered laughs from those who
remembered. I thanked the veterans in the audience for their service, and the families of Brooklyn for their sacrifice. I said that my own brother had been a naval officer who lost his life in the final days of the war. (I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get through that section of my remarks without losing my composure, but I managed it.) Then I explained that we were going to be re-creating a typical propaganda skit, which I hoped would boost the morale of the current audience just as much as it used to cheer on the workers during their lunch breaks.
The show I had written was about a typical day on the line at the Navy Yard, building battleships in Brooklyn. The high school kids in their overalls played the workers who sang and danced with joy as they did their part to make the world safe for democracy. Pandering to my constituency, I’d peppered the script with slangy dialogue that I hoped the old Navy Yard workers would remember.
“Coming through with the general’s car!” shouted one of my young actresses, pushing a wheelbarrow.
“No carping!” shouted another girl to a character who was complaining about the long hours and the dirty conditions.
I named the factory manager Mr. Goldbricker, which I knew all the old laborers would appreciate (“goldbricker” being the favorite old Yard term for “one who slacks off at work”).
Look, it wasn’t exactly Tennessee Williams, but the audience seemed to like it. What’s more, the high school drama club was having fun performing it. For me, though, the best part was seeing little Nathan—my ten-year-old sweetheart, my dear boy—sitting in the front row with his mother, watching the production with such wonder and amazement, you would’ve thought he was at the circus.
Our big finale was a number called “No Time for Coffee!” about how important it was at the Navy Yard to keep on schedule at all costs. The song contained the ever-so-catchy line: “Even if we had coffee, we wouldn’t have had the milk! / War rations made coffee just as valuable as silk!” (I don’t like to boast, but I did write that snazzy bit of brilliance all by myself—so move over, Cole Porter.)
Then we killed Hitler, and the show was over, and everyone was happy.
—
As we were packing up our cast and our props into the school bus we had borrowed for the day, a uniformed patrolman approached
me.
“May I have a word with you, ma’am?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said. “I’m sorry we’re parked here but it will just be a moment.”
“Could you step away from the vehicle, please?”
He looked terribly serious, and now I was concerned. What had we done wrong? Should we not have set up a stage? I’d assumed there were permits for all this.
I followed him over to his patrol car, where he leaned against the door and fixed me with a grave stare.
“I heard you speaking earlier,” he said. “Did I hear you correctly when you said your name is Vivian Morris?” His accent identified him as pure Brooklyn. He could have been born right on this very spot of dirt, by the sound of that voice.
“That’s right, sir.”
“You said your brother was killed in the war?”
“That’s correct.”
The patrolman took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. His hands were trembling. I wondered if perhaps he was a veteran himself. He was the right age for it. Sometimes they were shaky like this. I studied him more closely. He was a tall man in his middle forties.
Painfully thin. Olive skin and large, dark-brown eyes—further darkened by the circles beneath them and by the lines of worry above. Then I saw what looked like burn scars, running up the right side of his neck. Ropes of scars, twisted in red, pink, and yellowish flesh. Now I knew he was a veteran. I had a feeling I was about to hear a war story, and that it would be a tough one.
But then he shocked me.
“Your brother was Walter Morris, wasn’t he?” he asked.
Now I was the one who felt shaky. My knees almost went out of business. I had not mentioned Walter by name during my speech.
Before I could speak, the patrolman said, “I knew your brother, ma’am. I served with him on the Franklin.”
I put my hand over my mouth to stop the involuntary little sob that had risen in my throat.
“You knew Walter?” Despite my effort to control my voice, the words came out choked. “You were there?”
I didn’t elaborate upon my question, but clearly he knew what I meant. I was asking him: You were there on March 19, 1945? You were there when a kamikaze pilot crashed right through the flight deck of the USS Franklin, detonating the fuel storages, igniting the onboard aircraft, and turning the ship itself into a bomb? You were there when my brother and over eight hundred other men died? You were there, when my brother was buried at sea?
He nodded several times—a nervous, jerky bobbing of the head.
Yes. He was there.
I told my eyes not to glance again at the burn marks on this man’s neck.
My eyes glanced there anyhow, goddamn it.
I looked away. Now I didn’t know where to look.
Seeing me so uncomfortable, the man himself became only more nervous. His face looked almost panic-stricken. He seemed legitimately distraught. He was either terrified of upsetting me, or he was reliving his own nightmare. Maybe both. Witnessing this, I gathered my senses about me, took a deep breath, and set myself to the
task of trying to put this poor man at ease. What was my pain, after all, compared to what he had lived through?
“Thank you for telling me,” I said, in a slightly more steady voice. “I’m sorry for my reaction. It’s just a shock to hear my brother’s name after all these years. But it’s an honor to meet you.”
I put my hand on his arm, to give him a little squeeze of gratitude. He cringed as though I had attacked him. I pulled back my hand, but slowly. He reminded me of the sort of horses my mother was always good with—the jumpy ones, the agitated ones. The timorous and troubled ones that nobody but she could handle. I instinctively took the tiniest step back, and dropped my arms to my sides. I wanted to show him that I was no threat.
I tried a different tack.
“What’s your name, sailor?” I asked in a more gentle voice—almost a teasing voice.
“I’m Frank Grecco.”
He didn’t reach out for a handshake, so I didn’t, either.
“How well did you know my brother, Frank?”
He nodded once more. Again, with that nervous bobbing. “We were officers together on the flight deck. Walter was my division commander. We’d been ninety-day wonders together, too. Went in different directions at first, but ended up on the same ship at the end of the war. By then, he outranked me.”
“Oh. All right.”
I wasn’t sure what any of those words meant, but I didn’t want him to stop talking. There was somebody standing right in front of me who had known my brother. I wanted to find out everything about this man.
“Did you grow up around here, Frank?” I asked, already knowing the answer from his accent. But I was trying to make things as easy for him as I could. I would give him the simple questions first.
Again, the twitchy nod. “South Brooklyn.”
“And were you and my brother good friends?”
He winced.
“Miss Morris, I need to tell you something.” The patrolman took off his hat once more and jammed his trembling fingers through his hair. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”
“Why would I recognize you?”
“Because I already know you, and you already know me. Please don’t walk away, ma’am.”
“Why on earth would I walk away?”
“Because I met you back in 1941,” he said. “I was the guy who drove you home to your parents’ house.”
—
The past came roaring up at me like a dragon woken from a deep slumber. I felt dizzy with the heat and the force of it. In a
vertiginous series of flashes, I saw Edna’s face, Arthur’s face, Celia’s face, Winchell’s face. I saw my own young face in the back of that beatup Ford—shamed and shattered.
This was the driver.
This was the guy who had called me a dirty little whore, right in front of my brother.
“Ma’am,” he said—and now he was the one grabbing my arm. “Please don’t walk away.”
“Stop saying that.” My voice came out ragged. Why did he keep saying that, when I wasn’t going anywhere? I just wanted him to stop saying that.
But he did it again: “Please don’t walk away, ma’am. I need to talk to you.”
I shook my head. “I can’t—”
“You need to understand—I’m so sorry,” he said.
“Could you let go of my arm, please?”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, but he dropped my arm.
What did I feel?
Repulsion. Pure repulsion.