ALSO BY ELIZABETH GILBERT
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Stern Men
The Last American Man
Eat Pray Love
Committed: A Love Story
At Home on the Range, by Margaret Yardley Potter
The Signature of All Things
Big Magic
RIVERHEAD BOOKS
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Copyright © 2019 by Elizabeth Gilbert
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gilbert, Elizabeth, 1969– author.
Title: City of girls / Elizabeth Gilbert.
Description: New York : Riverhead Books, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019009003 (print) | LCCN 2019011748 (ebook) | ISBN 9780698408326 (ebook) | ISBN 9781594634734 (hardcover)
Subjects: | GSAFD: Love stories.
Classification: LCC PS3557.I3415 (ebook) | LCC PS3557.I3415 C58 2019 (print) | DCC 813/.54–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019009003
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design: Grace Han
Version_1
For Margaret Cordi—
my eyes, my ears, my beloved friend
CONTENTS
Also by Elizabeth Gilbert
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
New York City, April 2010
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Acknowledgments
About the Author
You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.
—COLETTE
NEW YORK CITY, APRIL 2010
I received a letter from his daughter the other day.
Angela.
I’d thought about Angela many times over the years, but this was only our third interaction.
The first was when I’d made her wedding dress, back in 1971.
The second was when she’d written to tell me that her father had died. That was in 1977.
Now she was writing to let me know that her mother had just passed away. I’m not sure how Angela expected me to receive this news. She might have guessed it would throw me for a loop. That said, I don’t suspect malice on her part. Angela is not constructed that way. She’s a good person. More important, an interesting one.
I was awfully surprised, though, to hear that Angela’s mother had lasted this long. I’d assumed the woman had died ages ago. God knows everyone else has. (But why should anyone’s longevity surprise me, when I myself have clung to existence like a barnacle to a boat bottom? I can’t be the only ancient woman still tottering around New York City, absolutely refusing to abandon either her life or her real estate.)
It was the last line of Angela’s letter, though, that impacted me the most.
“Vivian,” Angela wrote, “given that my mother has passed away, I wonder if you might now feel comfortable telling me what you were to my father?”
Well, then.
What was I to her father?
Only he could have answered that question. And since he never chose to discuss me with his daughter, it’s not my place to tell Angela what I was to him.
I can, however, tell her what he was to me.
ONE
In the summer of 1940, when I was nineteen years old and an idiot, my parents sent me to live with my Aunt Peg, who owned a theater company in New York City.
I had recently been excused from Vassar College, on account of never having attended classes and thereby failing every single one of my freshman exams. I was not quite as dumb as my grades made me look, but apparently it really doesn’t help if you don’t study. Looking back on it now, I cannot fully recall what I’d been doing with my time during those many hours that I ought to have spent in class, but—knowing me—I suppose I was terribly preoccupied with my appearance. (I do remember that I was trying to master a “reverse roll” that year—a hairstyling technique that, while infinitely important to me and also quite challenging, was not very Vassar.)
I’d never found my place at Vassar, although there were places to be found there. All different types of girls and cliques existed at the school, but none of them stirred my curiosity, nor did I see myself reflected in any of them. There were political revolutionaries at Vassar that year wearing their serious black trousers and discussing their opinions on international foment, but I wasn’t interested in international foment. (I’m still not. Although I did take notice of the black trousers, which I found intriguingly chic—but only if the pockets didn’t bulge.) And there were girls at Vassar who were bold academic explorers, destined to become doctors and lawyers long before many women did that sort of thing. I should have been interested in them, but I wasn’t. (I couldn’t tell any of them apart, for one thing. They all wore the same shapeless wool skirts that looked as though they’d been constructed out of old sweaters, and that just made my spirits low.)