was an article about the hit New York play City of Girls, that included photos of famed British actress Edna Parker Watson. She looked fantastic. For her primary portrait, she wore one of the suits I’d made for her the previous year—a deep gray number with a tiny, tucked waist and a fiercely chic bloodred taffeta collar. There was also a photo of Edna and Arthur walking through Central Park, hand in hand. (“Mrs. Watson, despite all her success, still praises marriage as her favorite role of all. ‘Many actresses will say that they are married to their work,’ says the stylish star. ‘But I prefer being married to a man, if given the choice!’”)
At the time, reading that article made my conscience feel like a rotting little rowboat sinking into a pond of mud. But thinking about it today, I have to say that it enrages me. Arthur Watson had completely gotten away with his misdeeds and lies. Celia had been banished by Peg, and I had been banished by Edna—but Arthur had been allowed to carry on with his lovely life and his lovely wife, as though nothing had ever happened.
The dirty little whores had been disposed of; the man was allowed to remain.
Of course, I didn’t recognize the hypocrisy back then.
But Lord, I recognize it now.
On Saturday nights, my parents and I went to our local country-club dances. I could see that what we had always so grandly called the “ballroom” was merely a medium-sized dining room with the tables pushed to one side. The musicians weren’t terrific, either. Meanwhile, I knew that down in New York City, the Viennese Roof was open for summer at the St. Regis, and I would never dance there again.
At the country-club dances, I talked to old friends and neighbors. I did my best. Some of them knew I’d been living in New York City and they tried to make conversation about it. (“I can’t imagine why people would want to live all boxed up on top of each other like that!”) I tried to make conversation with these people, too, about their lake houses, or their dahlias, or their coffee-cake recipes—or whatever seemed to matter to them. I couldn’t work out why anything mattered to anyone. The music dragged on. I danced with anyone who asked while noticing none of my partners with any specificity.
On weekends, my mother went to her horse shows. I went with her when she asked me to go. I would sit in the bleachers with cold hands and muddy boots, watching the horses go round and round the ring, and wondering why anybody would want to do that with their time.
My mother got regular letters from Walter, who was now stationed on an aircraft carrier out of Norfolk, Virginia. He said the food was better than you’d expect, and that he was getting along with all the guys. He sent best wishes to his friends back home. He never mentioned my name.
There was a rather headachy number of weddings to attend that spring, as well. Girls whom I’d gone to school with were getting married and pregnant—and in that order, too, can you imagine? I ran into a childhood friend of mine one day on the sidewalk. Her name was Bess Farmer, and she’d also gone to Emma Willard. She already had a one-year-old child whom she was pushing in a pram and she was pregnant again. Bess was a sweetheart—a genuinely intelligent girl with a hearty laugh and a talent for swimming. She’d been quite gifted in the sciences. It would be insulting and demeaning to say of Bess that she was nothing but a housewife now. But seeing her pregnant body gave me the sweats.
Girls whom I used to swim with naked in the creeks behind our houses back when we were all children (so skinny and energetic and sexless) were now plump matrons, leaking breast milk, bursting with babies. I couldn’t fathom it.
But Bess looked happy.
As for me, I was a dirty little whore.
I had done such a rotten thing to Edna Parker Watson. To betray a person who has helped you and been kind to you—this is the furthest reach of shame.
I walked through more agitated days, and slept fitfully through even worse nights.
I did everything I was told to do, and caused no trouble to anyone, but I still could not solve the problem of how to bear myself.
I met Jim Larsen through my father.
Jim was a serious, respectable, twenty-seven-year-old