City of Girls

The shows at the shipyard are grueling to create. With a limited budget, props, actors, and fresh scripts, Peg and her companions need to hustle to produce two shows a day for the navy yard workers. The theme is always patriotic propaganda. Vivian’s greatest ally in building costumes for the show is Marjorie Lowtsky, whose parents own the used-fabric store where Vivian shops. Marjorie culls the choicest fabrics as they come into the shop and reserves them for Vivian.

New York is no longer glamorous. Vivian recalls the war years there as being coarse. She says, “The war was a vast, starving colossus that needed everything from us—not just our time and labor, but also our cooking oil, our rubber, our metals, our paper, our coal. We were left with mere scraps” (337-38).

During this time, Vivian learns how to navigate the city. She buys a bicycle, cuts her hair in a short bob, and starts to dress in trousers all the time for practicality. She doesn’t pursue any men at this stage but accidentally bumps into her old flame Anthony and later crosses paths with Edna. Neither one acknowledges her existence. Vivian sadly realizes that some mistakes can never be corrected.

Vivian turns twenty-four in 1944. The shows at the shipyard drag on, and the war continues far longer than anyone expects. In 1945, Vivian receives the terrible news that Walter has been killed during a kamikaze attack on the USS Franklin. Her parents are devastated. Vivian knows they secretly wish she had been the one to die instead of her paragon of a brother. She almost feels the same.

In June, the Queen Mary sails into New York harbor, bearing thousands of returning soldiers, sailors, and nurses. Peg and Vivian go to greet the war veterans. When a young soldier kisses Vivian, she cries with relief. She says: “It would be three more months before the Japanese surrendered. But in my mind—in my hazy, peach-colored, summer-day memory—the war ended in that very moment” (351).

After the war on both fronts finally ends, New York reinvents itself by undertaking a building boom. Entire neighborhoods are demolished to make way for high rise offices and apartment buildings. Many of the old nightclubs have closed permanently. In 1950, Peg receives the sad news that the city has targeted the Lily Theater for demolition. She receives fifty thousand dollars and takes the change in stride, but Vivian is devastated as she watches the demolition. “To see a wrecking ball take aim at your home and history—at the place that really birthed you—well, that takes a degree of spinal fortitude that I did not yet possess. I couldn’t help but tear up” (354).

Peg and Olive use the money to buy a nice apartment on Sutton Place, and both get jobs at the local high school. Mr. Herbert moves to Virginia to live with his daughter. Now twenty-nine, Vivian is casting about, trying to decide what to do with her life when Marjorie suggests the two open a bridal shop in an upscale neighborhood. Marjorie will buy the building, and the two will live in upstairs apartments. Marjorie will also sketch the designs, while Vivian will create dresses out of vintage imported material.

In a bit of foreshadowing, Vivian tells Angela that the partnership was a success for decades. Both women became comfortably affluent as a result. Vivian also reveals that she not only loved the work but also the nervous young brides who entrusted her to make them look beautiful. “In other words—L’Atelier gave me love. I could not help it, you see. They were all young, they were all so afraid, and they were all so dear” (366).

Although Marjorie and Vivian create bridal gowns, neither woman marries. Over the years, Vivian learns to prize her independence. She says to Angela:

The other thing that was odd about me was how much I had come to love my independence. There was never a time in America when marriage was more of a fetish than in the 1950s, but I found that I simply wasn’t interested. (369-70)

Vivian does take lovers. Some of them become boyfriends, while others become friends, but she never falls in love with any of them. She feels no sense of shame about her sexual escapades. Vivian explains, “The war had invested me with an understanding that life is both dangerous and fleeting, and thus there is no point in denying yourself pleasure or adventure while you are here” (377).

Over time, Marjorie and Vivian develop close friendships with many other women. The rooftop of their building becomes a regular gathering place for them to assemble and talk about one another’s lives. During one of these sessions in 1955, Marjorie reveals that she’s become pregnant by a married professor she’s been dating for years. At first, she considers giving the baby up for adoption but, in a bold move, convinces Vivian that the two women can raise the child themselves.

Vivian agrees with the plan. When baby Nathan arrives, he’s fussy and fragile. The two women have trouble coping until they hire an expensive nanny. More money goes toward sending Nathan to a private school where he won’t be bullied. Nathan is a timid child who seems to be afraid of everything. Marjorie confesses to Vivian that keeping him was the biggest mistake of her life, yet she loves him anyway.

Time marches on, and the city changes yet again. In 1963, Winchell loses his newspaper column. In 1964, Billy dies in Hollywood of a heart attack. Vivian’s father also dies around the same time. One night in 1964, Vivian is watching the Jack Parr show when she notices a commercial featuring a middle-aged woman with a thick Bronx accent pitching floor wax. To her surprise, Vivian recognizes the actress as Celia. Just as Peg predicted, the showgirl landed on her feet after all. Vivian contemplates their relationship as nineteen-year-olds:

I believe that our friendship was always destined to have been momentary—a collision of two vain young girls who intersected at the zenith of their beauty and the nadir of their intelligence, and who had blatantly used each other to acquire status and turn men’s heads (390-91).