I came downstairs wearing my absurd glasses. My mother stopped in her tracks when she saw me. “For the love of mud, Vivian, what is that?”
“That’s called fashion,” I told her. “These sorts of frames are very much in style just now in New York City.”
“I’m not sure I’m glad I lived to see the day,” she said.
I kept them on anyhow.
How could I have explained that I wore them in honor of a fallen comrade, lost behind enemy lines?
—
In June, I asked my father if I could stop working in his office. I was making as much money sewing as I could make pretending to file papers and answer phones, and it was more satisfying, too. Best yet, as I told my father, my customers were paying me in cash, so I didn’t have to report my earnings to the government. That sealed the deal; he let me go. My father would do anything to hornswoggle the government.
For the first time in my life, I had some money saved.
I didn’t know what to do with it, but I had it.
Having money saved is not quite the same thing as having a plan, mind you—but it does start to make a girl feel as though a plan could someday be possible.
The days got longer.
—
In mid-July, I was sitting down to dinner with my parents when we heard a car pull into the driveway. My mother and father looked up, startled—the way they were always startled when something even slightly disturbed their routine.
“Dinner hour,” my father said, managing to form those two words into a grim lecture about the inevitable collapse of civilization.
I answered the door. It was Aunt Peg. She was red-faced and sweaty in the summer heat, she was wearing the most deranged getup (an oversized men’s plaid Oxford shirt, a pair of baggy dungaree culottes, and an old straw farm hat with a turkey feather in its brim), and I don’t think I’ve ever been more surprised or more happy to see anyone in my life. I was so surprised and happy, in fact, that I actually forgot at first to be ashamed of myself in her presence. I threw my arms around her in flagrant joy.
“Kiddo!” she said with a grin. “You’re looking choice!”
My parents had a less enthusiastic response to Peg’s arrival, but they adjusted themselves as best they could to this unexpected circumstance. Our maid dutifully set another place. My father offered Peg a cocktail, but to my surprise she said she would rather have iced tea, if it wasn’t too much trouble.
Peg plunked herself down at our dining-room table, mopped at her damp forehead with one of our fine Irish linen napkins, looked around at the lot of us, and smiled. “So! How’s everyone faring up here in the hinterlands?”
“I didn’t know you had a car,” my father said by means of a reply.
“I don’t. It belongs to a choreographer I know. He’s gone off to the Vineyard in his boyfriend’s Cadillac, so he let me borrow this one. It’s a Chrysler. It’s not so bad, for an old clunker. I’m sure he’d let you take it for a spin, if you’d like.”
“How’d you get the gas rations?” my father asked the sister whom he had not seen in over two years. (You might wonder why this was his preferred line of questioning, in lieu of a more standard salutation, but Dad had his motives. Gas rationing had just been mandated in New York State a few months earlier, and my father was in fits about it: He didn’t work as hard as he did in order to live in a totalitarian government! What would come next? Telling a man what time of night he might go to sleep? I prayed that the subject of gas rations would quickly change.)
“I cobbled together some stamps with a bit of bribery here and a bit of black-market elbow grease there. It’s not so hard in the city to get gas stamps. People don’t need their cars as much as they do out here.” Then Peg turned to my mother and asked warmly, “Louise, how are you?”
“I’m well, Peg,” said my mother, who was looking at her sister-in-law with an expression I would not call suspicious as much as cautious. (I couldn’t blame her. It didn’t make sense for Peg to be in Clinton. It wasn’t Christmas, and nobody had died.) “And how are you?”
“Disreputable as always. But it’s nice to escape the general mayhem of the city and come up here. I should do this more often. I’m sorry I didn’t let you folks know I was coming. It was a sudden decision. Your horses are well, Louise?”
“Well enough. There haven’t been as many shows since the war started, of course. They haven’t liked this heat, either. But they’re well.”
“What brings you here, anyhow?” my father asked.
My father didn’t hate his sister, but he did hold her in rather violent contempt. He thought she’d done nothing but revel about recklessly with her life (not unlike the way Walter perceived me, now that I think of it), and I suppose he had a point. Still, you’d think he could have ginned up a slightly more hospitable welcome.
“Well, Douglas, I’ll tell you. I’ve come to ask Vivian if she’ll return to New York City with me.”
At the sound of these words, a dusty old doorway in the center of my heart blew open, and a thousand white doves flew out. I didn’t even dare to speak. I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, the invitation would evaporate.
“Why?” my father asked.
“I need her. I’ve been commissioned by the military to put on a series of lunchtime shows for workers at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Some propaganda, some song-and-dance numbers, some romantic dramas and such. To keep up morale. That sort of thing. I don’t have enough help anymore to run the playhouse and also handle the Navy commission. I could really use Vivian.”
“But what does Vivian know about romantic dramas and such?” my mother asked.
“More than you might think,” said Peg.
Thankfully, Peg didn’t look at me when she said this. I could feel my neck turning red all the same.
“But she’s only just settled back here,” said my mother. “And she got so homesick last year in New York. The city didn’t suit her.”
“You were homesick?” Now Peg was looking me straight in the eye, with the faintest trace of a smile. “That’s what happened, was it?”
My blush spread farther up my neck. But again, I didn’t dare speak.
“Look,” said Peg, “it doesn’t have to be forever. Vivian could come back to Clinton if she gets homesick again. But I’m in a spot of trouble. It’s awful hard to find workers these days. The men are all gone. Even my showgirls have gone to work in factories. Everyone can pay better than I can. I just need hands on deck. Hands I can trust.”
She said it. She said the word “trust.”
“It’s hard for me to find workers, too,” said my father.
“What, is Vivian working for you?” Peg asked.
“No, but she did work for me for some time, and I might need her at some point. I think she could learn a great deal from working for me again.”
“Oh, does Vivian have a particular bent for the mining industry?”
“It just seems to me that you’ve driven a long distance to find a menial laborer. It seems to me you could’ve filled the position in the city. But then I’ve never understood why you always resist everything that might make your life easier.”
“Vivian’s not menial labor,” Peg said. “She’s a sensational costumer.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Years of exhaustive research in the field of theater, Douglas.”
“Ha. The field of theater.”