“All right, then. If you say so, I trust you. I won’t say anything to Mother and Dad about Anthony,” he said. (I took my first easy breath of the day.) “But you have to promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“If you get into any trouble with this fellow, you will call me.”
“I will,” I swore. “But I won’t get into any trouble. I promise.”
Suddenly, Walter looked old. It could not have been easy, being a twenty-two-year-old elder statesman on his way to war. Trying to uphold his familial duties and his patriotic duties all at the same time.
“I know you’ll end this thing with Anthony soon, Vee. Just promise me you’ll be smart. I know what a smart kid you are. You wouldn’t do anything reckless. You’ve got too good a head on your shoulders for that.”
My heart broke a little in that moment—watching my brother dig so deep into his pristine imagination, desperately searching for ways to think the best of me.
EIGHTEEN
Angela, I don’t want to tell you this next part of the story.
I think I’ve been stalling.
It’s painful, this next part.
Let me stall a little while longer.
No, let me get it over with.
—
Now it was the end of March 1941.
It had been a long winter. New York had been hit with a murderous snowstorm earlier in the month, and it took the city weeks to dig out from under it. We were all sick of being cold. The Lily was a drafty old building, you may be amazed to learn, and the dressing rooms were better suited to storing furs than warming human beings.
We all had chilblains and cold sores. All of us girls were longing to wear our cute spring frocks and to show our figures again, instead of being mummified in overcoats, galoshes, and scarves. I’d seen some of our dancers going out on the town with long underwear under their gowns—which they furtively took off in the bathrooms of nightclubs, and then just as furtively put back on again at the end of the evening, before braving the freezing night air. Believe me, there is nothing glamorous about a girl in a silk gown and long underwear. I’d been feverishly sewing new spring clothes for myself all winter—in the irrational hope that if my wardrobe was more summery, the weather would be, too.
Finally, toward the end of the month, the weather broke and the cold spell lifted a bit.
It was one of those bright, gladdening spring days in New York that tricks you into thinking that perhaps summer has come. I hadn’t been in the city long enough not to fall for the trick (never trust the month of March in New York!), and so I allowed myself to feel a burst of joy at the appearance of the sun.
It was a Monday. The theater was dark. I got an invitation in the morning mail for Edna. An organization called the Ladies British-American Protection Alliance was hosting a fund-raiser that night at the Waldorf. All proceeds would go toward lobbying efforts to convince the United States to enter the war.
Late notice as it was, the organizers wrote, would Mrs. Watson consider gracing the event with her presence? Her name would bring such prestige to the occasion. Furthermore, would Mrs. Watson be kind enough to ask her young costar Anthony Roccella if he would join her at the event? And would the pair consider singing their celebrated duet from City of Girls, for the entertainment of the ladies gathered?
I turned down most of Edna’s invitations without even running them by her. Her demanding performance schedule made most extracurricular socializing impossible, and right now the world wanted more of Edna’s energies than she had available to share. So I almost declined this invite, too. But then I gave it a second thought. If there was any cause that Edna cared about, it was the campaign to involve the United States in the war. Many nights, I had heard her talking with Olive about just that concern. And it looked like a modest enough request—a song, a dance, a supper. So I brought the invitation to her attention.
Edna instantly decided to attend. She’d been made so stir-crazy by the dreadful winter, she said, that she welcomed the chance to go out. And of course, she would do anything for poor England! Then she asked me to call Anthony and see if he would escort her to the benefit and sing their duet with her. Somewhat, but not entirely, to my surprise, he agreed. (Anthony could not have cared less about politics—he made even me look like Fiorello La Guardia by comparison—but he adored Edna. If I haven’t mentioned before that Anthony adored Edna, please do forgive me. It would become tedious if I had to keep up a thorough list of everyone who adored Edna Parker Watson. Just assume they all did.)
“Sure, baby, I’ll haul Edna over there,” he said. “We’ll have a gas.”
“Thank you awfully, darling,” Edna said to me, when I confirmed that Anthony would be her date for the evening. “Together we will defeat Hitler at last, and we’ll be back at home in time for bed, no less.”
—
That should have been the end of it.
This should have been a simple interaction—an innocent decision by two popular entertainers to attend an ultimately meaningless political event, hosted by a group of well-heeled, well-intentioned Manhattan women who could do absolutely nothing about winning the war in Europe.
But that wasn’t the end of it. Because as I was helping Edna to get dressed for the evening, her husband, Arthur, walked in. Arthur saw Edna putting herself together so smashingly, and asked where she was going. She told him she was dropping by the Waldorf to perform a song at a small political benefit that some ladies were putting together for England. Arthur got sulky. He reminded her that he’d wanted them to go see a movie that night. (“We only get one night off a week, blast it!”) She apologized (“But it’s for England, darling!”), and that seemed to be all there was to this little marital tiff.
But when Anthony showed up an hour later to pick up Edna, and Arthur saw the young man standing there in his tuxedo (rather overdressed, if I may say so), Arthur became angry again.
“What’s this one doing here?” he asked, eyeballing Anthony with naked suspicion.
“He’s escorting me to the event, darling,” said Edna.
“Why is he escorting you to the event?”
“Because he was invited, darling.”
“You didn’t say you were going on a date.”
“It’s not a date, darling. It’s an appearance. The ladies want Anthony and me to perform our duet for them.”
“Why don’t I get to go to the event, then, and perform a duet with you?”
“Darling, because we don’t have a duet.”
Anthony made the mistake of laughing at this, and Arthur spun around to face him again. “You think it’s funny to take a man’s wife to the Waldorf?”
Always the diplomat, Anthony cracked his gum and responded, “I think it’s kinda funny.”
Arthur looked like he might lunge at him, but Edna spryly leapt between the two men and placed a petite, well-manicured hand on her husband’s broad chest. “Arthur, darling, keep your wits. This is a professional engagement, and nothing more.”
“Professional, is it? Are you being paid?”
“Darling, it’s a benefit. Nobody is being paid.”
“It doesn’t benefit me!” Arthur cried, and Anthony—once more, with his native tact—laughed.