you know what, Angela? That devastation might’ve had something to do with why I performed so poorly at college my freshman year. Perhaps I had not been such a terrible student, after all. Perhaps I had merely been sad.
I am only realizing this possibility at this moment, as I write to you.
Oh, dear.
Sometimes it takes a very long while to figure things out.
TWO
Anyway, I arrived in New York City safely—a girl so freshly hatched that there was practically yolk in my hair.
Aunt Peg was supposed to meet me at Grand Central. My parents had informed me of this fact as I’d gotten on the train in Utica that morning, but nobody had mentioned any particular plan. I’d not been told exactly where I was supposed to wait for her. Also, I’d been given no phone number to call in case of an emergency, and no address to go to should I find myself alone. I was just supposed to “meet Aunt Peg at Grand Central,” and that was that.
Well, Grand Central Station was grand, just as advertised, but it was also a great place for not finding someone, so it’s no surprise that I couldn’t locate Aunt Peg when I arrived. I stood there on the platform for the longest time with my piles of luggage, watching the station teeming with souls, but nobody resembled Peg.
It’s not that I didn’t know what Peg looked like. I’d met my aunt a few times before then, even though she and my father weren’t close. (This may be an understatement. My father didn’t approve of his sister Peg any more than he’d approved of their mother. Whenever Peg’s name came up at the dinner table, my father would snort through his nose and say, “Must be nice—gallivanting about the world, living in the land of make-believe, and spending it by the hundreds!” And I would think: That does sound nice. . . .)
Peg had come to a few family Christmases when I was young—but not many, because she was always on the road with her theatrical touring company. My strongest memory of Peg was from when I’d come to New York City for a day trip at age eleven, accompanying my father on a business venture. Peg had taken me to skate in Central Park. She’d brought me to visit Santa Claus. (Although we both agreed I was far too old for Santa Claus, I would not have missed it for the world, and was secretly thrilled to meet him.) She and I had also eaten a smorgasbord lunch together. It was one of the more delightful days of my life. My father and I hadn’t stayed overnight in the city because Dad hated and distrusted New York, but it had been one glorious day, I can assure you. I thought my aunt was terrific. She had paid attention to me as a person, not a child, and that means everything to an eleven-year-old child who does not want to be seen as a child.
More recently, Aunt Peg had come back home to my hometown of Clinton in order to attend the funeral of Grandmother Morris, her mother. She’d sat next to me during the service and held my hand in her big, capable paw. This gesture had both comforted and surprised me (my family were not predisposed toward hand-holding, you may be shocked to learn). After the funeral, Peg had embraced me with the strength of a lumberman, and I’d dissolved into her arms, spewing out a Niagara of tears. She’d smelled of lavender soap, cigarettes, and gin. I’d clung to her like a tragic little koala. But I hadn’t been able to spend much time with her after the funeral. She needed to leave town right away, because she had a show to produce back in the city. I felt that I’d embarrassed myself by falling to bits in her arms, comforting though she had been.
I barely knew her, after all.
In fact, what follows is the sum total of everything I knew about my Aunt Peg, upon my arrival in New York City at the age of nineteen:
I knew that Peg owned a theater called the Lily Playhouse, located somewhere in midtown Manhattan.
I knew that she had not set out for a career in the theater, but had come by her work in a rather random way.
I knew that Peg had trained as a Red Cross nurse, curiously enough, and had been stationed in France during World War I.