You know—clean up my man a bit.
With this in mind, I had started making suggestions to Anthony—not too subtly, I’m afraid—about how he could boost his status in the world. Wouldn’t he feel more grown-up if he didn’t sleep on a couch? Wouldn’t he be more attractive if he wore slightly less oil in his hair? Wouldn’t he seem more refined if he wasn’t always chewing gum? How about if his speech was somewhat less slangy? For instance, when my brother, Walter, had asked Anthony if he held any career aspirations outside of show business, Anthony had grinned, and said, “Not so’s you’d notice.” Might there have been a more cultivated way to answer this question?
Anthony knew exactly what I was doing—he was no dummy—and he hated it. He accused me of trying to get him to “turn square” in order to make my brother happy, and he wasn’t having it. And it certainly didn’t endear him to Walter.
In those few weeks Walter stayed at the Lily, the tension between my brother and my boyfriend grew so thick you could have busted it up with a sledgehammer. It was an issue of class, an issue of education, an issue of sexual threat, an issue of brother versus lover. But some of it, too, I suspect, was just a matter of unfettered, competitive young maleness. They each had a lot of pride and a lot of machismo, which made every room in New York City too small for the both of them.
Finally it all came to a head one night when a group of us had gone out for drinks at Sardi’s after the show. Anthony had been manhandling me at the bar (to my delight and pleasure, of course) when he caught Walter giving him the stink-eye. Next thing I knew, the two young men were chest to chest.
“You want me to back outta this deal with your sister, dontcha?” Anthony demanded, pushing a little farther into Walter’s space. “Well, just you try to make me do it, captain.”
The way Anthony was grinning at Walter in that moment—leering, really—had an unmistakable edge of threat. For the first time, I could see the Hell’s Kitchen street fighter in my boyfriend. It was also the first time I’d ever seen Anthony look like he cared about something. And in that moment, what he cared about was not me—but the pleasure of punching my brother in the face.
Walter held Anthony’s gaze without blinking and replied in a low tone, “If you’re trying to take a crack at me, son, don’t do it with words.”
I watched Anthony size up my brother—taking note of the football shoulders and the wrestling neck—and think better of it. Anthony dropped his eyes and backed down. He gave a careless laugh and said, “We got no beef here, captain. You’re all right, you’re all right.”
Then he slid back into his customary air of nonchalance and stepped away.
Anthony had made the right call. My brother, Walter, was many things (an elitist, a puritan, and uptight as all hell), but he was not a weakling and he was not a coward.
My brother could’ve pounded my boyfriend straight into the pavement.
Anyone could see that.
—
The next day, Walter took me out to lunch at the Colony so that we could “have a talk.”
I knew exactly what (or, rather, whom) this talk was going to be about, and I dreaded it.
“Please don’t tell Mother and Dad about Anthony,” I asked Walter as soon as we sat down at our table. I hated to even bring up the subject of my boyfriend, but I knew that Walter would, and I figured my best bet was to start off with a plea for my life. My biggest fear was that he was going to report my misdoings to my parents, and that they would barrel right down upon me and clip my wings.
It took awhile for him to answer.
“I want to be fair about this, Vee,” he said.
Of course he did. Walter always wanted to be fair.
I waited, feeling the way I often did with Walter—like a child who has just been called before the headmaster. God, how I wished he was my ally! But he had never been. Even as a boy, he’d never kept a secret for me or conspired with me against the adults. He’d always been an extension of my parents. He’d always behaved more like a father than a peer. Moreover, I’d treated him as such.
Finally he said, “You can’t fool around like this forever, you know.”
“Oh, I know,” I said—although my actual plan, in point of fact, was to fool around like this forever.
“There’s a real world out there, Vee. You’re going to have to put away the balloons and streamers at some point and grow up.”
“Without a doubt,” I agreed.
“You were raised right. I have to trust in that. When the time comes, your breeding will kick in. You’re playing the bohemian now, but eventually you’ll settle down and marry the correct kind of person.”
“Of course I will.” I nodded as though this were my plan precisely.
“If I didn’t believe that you had good sense, I would send you back home to Clinton right now.”
“I don’t blame you!” I cried, in fullest agreement. “If I didn’t believe that I had good sense, I would send myself back home to Clinton right now.”
Which didn’t particularly make sense, but seemed to mollify him. I knew my brother well enough, thank God, to know that my only hope for salvation was to agree with him completely.
“It’s kind of like when I went to Delaware,” he said, softening a bit, after another long silence.
This stopped me up. Delaware? Then I remembered that my brother had spent a few weeks the previous summer in Delaware. He’d been working at a power plant, if I recalled, learning something about electrical engineering.
“Of course!” I said. “Delaware!” I wanted to encourage this positive-sounding track—although I had no idea what he was referring to.
“Some of the people I spent time with in Delaware were pretty rough,” he said. “But you know how that is. Sometimes you want to rub elbows with people who weren’t raised the same way as you. Expand your horizons. Maybe it builds character.”
Well, that was pretentious.
Encouragingly, though, he smiled.
I smiled, too. I tried to look like someone who was busy expanding her horizons and building her character through intentional fraternization with her social inferiors. A difficult look to master in a single facial expression, but I did my best.
“You’re just having your kicks,” he decided, sounding as though he were almost convinced of this diagnosis himself. “It’s innocent enough.”
“That’s right, Walter. I’m just having my kicks. You don’t have to worry about me.”
His face darkened. I’d made a tactical error; I had contradicted him.
“Well, I do have to worry about you, Vee, because I’m starting Officer Candidate School in a few days. I’ll be moving to the battleship uptown, and I won’t be around to keep an eye on you anymore.”
Hallelujah, I thought, while nodding gravely.
“I don’t like the direction I see your life heading in,” he said. “That’s what I wanted to tell you today. I don’t like it at all.”
“I can certainly understand that!” I said, going back to my original strategy of absolute accordance.
“Tell me there’s nothing serious for you about this Anthony fellow.”
“Nothing,” I lied.
“You haven’t crossed the line with him?”
I could feel myself blush. It wasn’t a blush of modesty, but of guilt. Still, it worked in my favor. I must have looked like an innocent girl, embarrassed that her brother had mentioned the subject of sex—however obliquely.
Walter flushed, too. “I’m sorry I had to ask,” he said, protecting my perceived guilelessness. “But I need to know.”
“I understand,” I said. “But I would never . . . not with that kind of guy. Not with anybody, Walter.”