“My own attempt at a career on the stage was interrupted by the financial reversals of my husband—so would you consider taking me on as your protégée? I believe you will be surprised to find out that we have much the same style of acting.”
And then there was this incredible (and very out of character) letter, from none less than Katharine Hepburn herself: “Darlingest Edna—I have just seen your performance, and it drove me insane, and of course I shall have to come and see it about four more times, and then I will jump in a river, because I shall never be as good as you!”
I know about all these letters because Edna asked me to read and respond to them for her, since I had such nice handwriting. This was an easy job for me, now that I didn’t have any new costumes to design. Given that the Lily was running the same production now, week after week, there was no further need for my talents. Aside from mending and maintenance, my duties were over. For that reason, in the wake of our show’s success, I more or less became Edna’s private secretary.
I was the one who turned down all the invitations and pleas. I was the one who arranged the Vogue photo shoot. I was the one who gave a reporter from Time a tour of the Lily for an article called “How to Make a Hit.” And I was the one who escorted around that terrifyingly acerbic theater critic Alexander Woollcott, when he profiled Edna for The New Yorker. We were all worried that he would savage Edna in print (“Alec never takes a nibble out of somebody when a chomp will do,” said Peg), but we needn’t have been concerned, as it turned out. For here was Woollcott on Watson:
Edna Parker Watson possesses the face of a woman who has lived her life in a state of upward dreaming. Enough of those dreams have come true, it appears, to have kept her forehead unlined by worry or sorrow, and her eyes are bright with the expectation of more good news to come. . . . What this actress now possesses is something beyond mere sincerity of feeling; she has an inexhaustible catalogue of humanness at her disposal. . . . Too spirited an artist to limit herself to Shakespeare and Shaw, she has recently donated her talents to City of Girls—the most dizzy-headed and heel-kicking show we have seen in New York for quite some time. . . . To watch her become Mrs. Alabaster is to watch comedy transmogrify into art. . . . When a breathless fan at the stage door thanked her for coming to New York City at last, Mrs. Watson replied, “Well, my dear, it is not as though I have so many claims on my time just now.” If Broadway is wise, that situation shall soon be remedied.
Anthony was becoming a bit of a star, too, thanks to City of Girls. He’d got cast in some radio dramas, which he could record in the afternoons without interfering with his performance schedule. He’d also been hired as the new spokesman and model for the Miles Tobacco Company (“Why sweat, when you can smoke?”). So he had good money coming in now, for the first time in his life. But he still hadn’t upgraded his living arrangements.
I’d started leaning on Anthony, trying to convince him to get his own place. Why would such a promising young star still be sharing quarters with his brother in a dank old tenement building that smelled of cooking oil and onions? I was pushing him to rent a nicer apartment, with an elevator and a doorman, and maybe even a garden in the back—and definitely not in Hell’s Kitchen. But he wouldn’t consider it. I don’t know why he so resisted moving out of that filthy fourth-floor walk-up. All I can guess is that he suspected me of trying to make him look more marriageable.
Which was, of course, exactly what I was doing.
The problem was that my brother had now met Anthony—and needless to say, he did not approve.
If only there was a way to hide from Walter the fact I was dating Anthony Roccella at all! But Anthony and I were pretty obvious in our lust, and my brother was far too observant to have missed it. Plus, since Walter was now staying at the Lily, he was easily able to see what was