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.
I had 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?