rest of us stood in silence while this man’s song shook the walls in doleful sorrow.
President Truman was quickly and quietly ushered in, with no majesty.
We all worked harder.
Still the war did not end.
On April 28, 1945, the burned-out, twisted hulk of my brother’s aircraft carrier sailed into the Brooklyn Navy Yard on her own steam. The USS Franklin had somehow managed to limp and list halfway across the world, and through the Panama Canal—piloted by a skeleton crew—to arrive now at our “hospital.” Two thirds of her crew were dead, missing, or injured.
The Franklin was met at the docks by a Navy band playing a dirgeful hymn, and also by Peg and me.
We stood on the dock and saluted as we watched this wounded ship—which I thought of as my brother’s coffin—sailing home to be repaired, as best she could. But even I could tell, just by looking at that blackened, gutted pile of steel, that nobody would ever be able to fix this.
On May 7, 1945, Germany finally surrendered.
But the Japanese were still holding out, and they were holding out hard.
That week, Mrs. Levinson and I wrote a song for our workers called “One Down, One to Go.”
We kept working.
On June 20, 1945, the Queen Mary sailed into New York Harbor carrying fourteen thousand U.S. servicemen returning home from Europe. Peg and I went to meet them at Pier 90, on the Upper West Side. Peg had painted a sign on the back of an old piece of scenery that said: “Hey, YOU! Welcome HOME!”
“Who are you welcoming home, specifically?” I asked.
“Every last one of them,” she said.
I initially hesitated to join her. The thought of seeing thousands of young men coming home—but none of them Walter—seemed too sad to bear. But she had insisted on it.
“It will be good for you,” she predicted. “More important, it will be good for them. They need to see our faces.”
I was glad I went, in the end. Very glad.
It was a delicious early summer day. I’d been living in New York for more than three years at that point, but I still wasn’t immune to the beauty of my city on a perfect blue-sky afternoon like this—one of those soft, warm days, when you can’t help but feel that the whole town loves you, and wants nothing but your happiness.
The sailors and soldiers (and nurses!) came streaming down the wharf in a delirious wave of celebration. They were met by a large cheering crowd, of which Peg and I constituted a small but enthusiastic delegation. She and I took turns waving her sign, and we cheered till our throats were hoarse. A band on the docks pounded out loud versions of the year’s popular songs. The servicemen were tossing balloons in the air, which I quickly realized were not balloons at all, but blown-up condoms. (I wasn’t the only one who realized this; I couldn’t help laughing as the mothers around me tried to stop their children from picking them up.)
One lanky, sleepy-eyed sailor paused to take a long look at me as he was walking by.
He grinned, and said in a broad southern accent, “Say, honey—what’s the name of this town anyhow?”
I grinned back. “We call it New York City, sailor.”
He pointed to some construction cranes on the other side of the wharf. He said, “Looks like it’ll be a nice enough place, once it’s finished.”
Then he slung his arm around my waist and kissed me—just like you’ve seen in that famous photo from Times Square, on VJ Day. (There was a lot of that going on that year.) But what you never saw in that photo was the girl’s reaction. I’ve always wondered how she felt about her kiss. We will never know, I suppose. But I can tell you how I felt about my kiss—which was long, expert, and considerably passionate.
Well, Angela, I liked it.
I really liked it. I kissed him right back, but then—out of the blue—I started weeping and I couldn’t stop. I buried my face in his neck, clung to him, and bathed him with tears. I cried for my brother, and for all the young men who would never come back. I cried for all the girls who had lost their sweethearts and their youth. I cried because we had given so many years to this infernal, eternal war. I cried because I was so goddamned tired. I cried because I missed kissing boys—and I wanted to kiss so many more of them!—but