I couldn’t tell, though, if it was repulsion for him or for me. Whatever it was, it was growing out of a trove of shame that I thought I’d buried long ago.
I hated this guy. That’s what I felt: hate.
“I was a stupid kid,” he said. “I didn’t know how to act.”
“I really must go now.”
“Please don’t walk away, Vivian.”
His voice was rising, which disturbed me. But hearing him call me by my name was even worse. I hated it, that he knew my name. I hated that he’d watched me onstage today, and knew who I was the whole time—that he knew this much about me. I hated that he’d seen me get choked up about my brother. I hated that he probably knew my brother better than I did. I hated that Walter had attacked me in front of him. I hated that this man had once called me a dirty little whore. Who did he think he was, approaching me now, after all these years? This sense of rage and disgust compounded, and it strengthened something in my spine: I needed to leave right now.
“I have a bus full of kids waiting for me,” I said.
I started walking away.
“I need to talk to you, Vivian!” he cried out after me. “Please.”
But I got on the bus and left him standing there by his patrol car— hat in hand, like a man begging for alms.
And that, Angela, is how I officially met your father.
—
Somehow,day. I managed to do all the things I needed to get done that
I dropped the kids back at the high school and helped unload the props. We returned the bus to its parking space. Marjorie and I walked home with Nathan, who could not stop chattering on about how much he had loved the show, and how when he grew up he wanted to work in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Of course, Marjorie could tell I was upset. She kept casting glances at me, over Nathan’s head. But I just nodded at her, to indicate that I was fine. Which I decidedly was not.
Then—just as soon as I was free—I ran straight to Aunt Peg’s house.
—
Ihad never before told anybody about that car ride home to Clinton back in 1941.
Nobody knew how my brother had savaged me up one side and down the other—eviscerating me with rebuke, and allowing his disgust to rain down upon me in buckets. I had certainly never told anyone about the double disgrace of having this attack occur in front of a witness—a stranger—who had then added his own coup de grâce to my punishment by calling me a dirty little whore. Nobody knew that Walter had not so much rescued me from New York City as dumped me like a bag of garbage on my parents’ doorstep—too sickened by my behavior to even look at my face for a moment longer than he had to.
But now I rushed over to Sutton Place, to bring the story to Peg.
I found my aunt stretched out on her couch, as she was wont to do those days—alternating between smoking and coughing. She was listening to radio coverage of the Yankees. As soon as I walked in, she told me that it was Mickey Mantle Day over at Yankee Stadium—that they were honoring his stellar fifteen-year career in baseball. In fact, when I burst into the apartment and started talking, Peg put up her hand: Joe DiMaggio was speaking, and she didn’t want him interrupted.
“Have some respect, Vivvie,” she said, all business.
So I shut my mouth and let her have her moment. I knew she would have liked to be there at the stadium in person, but she wasn’t strong enough anymore for such a strenuous excursion. But Peg’s face was awash with rapture and emotion as she listened to DiMaggio honoring Mantle. By the end of his speech, she had fat tears running down her cheeks. (Peg could handle anything—war, catastrophe, failure, death of a relative, a cheating husband, the demolition of her beloved theater—
without shedding a tear, but great moments in sports history always made her weepy.)
I’ve often wondered if our conversation would have gone differently, had she not been so saturated with emotion for the Yankees that day. There’s no way of telling. I did sense that it was frustrating for her to turn off the radio once DiMaggio was done talking and give her full attention to me—but she was a generous person, so she did it anyhow. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Coughed some more. Lit another cigarette. Then she listened to me with full absorption, as I began to tell her my tale of woe.
Midway through my saga, Olive came in. She had been out shopping at the market. I stopped talking in order to help her put away groceries, and then Peg said, “Vivvie, start from the beginning again. Tell Olive everything you’ve been telling me.”
This wouldn’t have been my preference. I had learned to love Olive Thompson over the years, but she would not be the first candidate I would run to if I needed a shoulder to cry on. Olive wasn’t exactly a soft bosom of overflowing sympathy. Still, she was there, and she and Peg— as they had gotten older—had increasingly become my parental figures.
Seeing my hesitation, Peg said, “Just tell her about it, Vivvie. Trust me—Olive is better at this kind of stuff than any of us.”
So I backed up, and started my saga all over again. The car ride in 1941, Walter’s disgracing of me, the driver calling me a dirty little whore, my dark time of shame and banishment in upstate New York, and now the return of the driver—a patrolman with burn scars who had been on the Franklin. Who knew my brother. Who knew everything.
The women listened to me attentively. And when I got to the end they stayed attentive—as though they were waiting for more of the story.
“And then what happened?” asked Peg when she realized I wasn’t talking anymore.
“Nothing. After that, I left.”
“You left?”
“I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want to see him.”
“Vivian, he knew your brother. He was on the Franklin. From your description, it sounds as though he was gravely wounded in that attack. And you didn’t want to talk to him?”
“He hurt me,” I said.
“He hurt you? He hurt your feelings twenty-five years ago, and you just walked away from him? This person who knew your brother? This veteran?”
I said, “That car ride was the worst thing that ever happened to me, Peg.”
“Oh, was it?” snapped Peg. “Did you think to ask the man about the worst thing that ever happened to him?”
She was becoming agitated, in a manner that was not at all in character. This was not what I had come for. I wanted comfort, but I was being scolded. I was starting to feel foolish and embarrassed.
“Never mind,” I said. “It’s nothing. I shouldn’t have bothered you today.”
“Don’t be stupid—it’s not nothing.”
She had never spoken to me this sharply.
“I should never have brought it up,” I said. “I interrupted your game —you’re just irritated with me about that. I’m sorry I burst in here.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about the goddamn baseball game, Vivian.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just upset and I wanted to talk to someone.”
“You’re upset? You walked away from that wounded veteran and then came here to me, because you wanted to talk about your difficult life?”
“Jesus, Peg—don’t come down on me like this. Just forget it. Forget I said anything.”
“How can I?”
Then she started coughing—one of her awful, jagged, coughing fits. Her lungs sounded barbed and brittle. She sat up, and Olive pounded on her back for a bit. Then Olive lit another cigarette for Peg, who took the deepest drags she could, interspersed with more fits of coughing.
Peg composed herself. Dummy that I was, I was hoping she was about to apologize for having been so mean to me. Instead she said, “Look, kiddo, I give up here. I don’t understand what you want out of this situation. I don’t understand you at all right now. I’m just very disappointed in you.”
She had never said that. Not even all those years ago, when I had betrayed her friend and nearly capsized her hit show.
Then she turned to Olive, and said, “I don’t know. What do you think, boss?”
Olive sat quietly with her hands folded over her lap, looking down at the floor. I listened to Peg’s labored breathing, and to the sound of a window shade on the other side of the room, tapping in the breeze. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what Olive thought. But there we were.
Finally Olive looked up at me. Her expression was stern, as always. But as she chose her words, I could sense that she was choosing them carefully, so as to not do unnecessary harm.
“The field of honor is a painful field, Vivian,” she said.
I waited for her to say more, but she didn’t.
Peg started laughing—and again coughing. “Well, thank you for your contribution, Olive. That settles everything.”
We sat there quietly for a long time. I got up and helped myself to one of Peg’s cigarettes, even though I’d quit a few weeks earlier. Or had sort of quit.
“The field of honor is a painful field,” Olive went on at last, as though Peg had not spoken. “That’s what my father taught me when I was young. He taught me that the field of honor is not a place where children can play. Children don’t have any honor, you see, and they aren’t expected to, because it’s too difficult for them. It’s too painful. But to become an adult, one must step into the field of honor. Everything will be expected of you now. You will need to be vigilant in your principles. Sacrifices will be demanded. You will be judged. If you make mistakes, you must account for them. There will be instances when you must cast aside your impulses and take a higher stance than another person—a person without honor—might take. Such instances may hurt, but that’s why honor is a painful field. Do you understand?”