City of Girls

Vivian confesses to Angela that she fell in love with Frank, even though the two were completely different people. She says of Frank, “He was such a weighty person—by which I mean, heavy in his very essence. He was a person whose life had been hard from the beginning. He was a man who did nothing casually, thoughtlessly, or carelessly” (416-17).

Because Frank can’t bear to sit still for very long, he invites Vivian out for late-night walks. During this time, she learns his complete story. Frank came from a large Sicilian immigrant family of manual laborers in Brooklyn. Early in life, he demonstrated a high degree of intelligence. He trained as an aeronautical engineer before joining the Navy. He also married a girl from the neighborhood named Rosella, and they had a daughter named Angela.

The destruction of the USS Franklin changed Frank’s life. He and several dozen other crewmen were flung overboard by the blast of the attack. Many burned to death as the flames ignited the ocean waters. The captain of the Franklin declared everyone who went over the side to be deserters to draw attention away from his own incompetence. Frank has borne the stigma of cowardice and the trauma of his injuries ever since.

Because he can’t stand to be touched, he’s kept his distance from his wife and daughter. As Vivian explains to Angela, “He didn’t want you to know him very well, Angela, because he didn’t want his life to hurt your life” (422). Frank then asks Vivian about her life. She discloses her numerous affairs, but Frank doesn’t seem shocked or dismayed. He tells her, “The world ain’t straight, Vivian. Never will be. Our rules, they don’t mean a thing” (428).

Vivian confesses to Angela that she’s never loved the people that everybody tells her she ought to love. Peg, Billy, Olive, Marjorie, and Nathan are all oddballs. They are the family that Vivian chose for herself. She also places Frank in the same category and says, “I came to love your father just as much as I loved any of them. My heart cannot offer him higher praise than that. He became as close to me as my own, beautiful, random, and real family” (432). Vivian and Frank continue their late-night walks and explore various parts of the city. Their daily lives never intersect, even though Vivian’s friends are aware of him. Vivian has no illusions that a normal relationship could ever exist between the two, nor does she want one.

Although their walks usually occur at night, Vivian receives a panicked call from Frank in the middle of the day. He’s run across another survivor from the Franklin attack. This is a tough-as-nails farm boy who is now a successful attorney. He treats Frank scornfully and implies he was a twitchy little coward during the war. Shaken by the encounter, Frank confesses to Vivian that he believes he really is a coward and a failure. Her reply is, “You’re wrong, Frank. It would not mean that you’re a failure as a man. Do you want to know what it actually means? It means nothing” (444).

Vivian then reminds Frank of his own observation that the rules of the world are meaningless because life just happens, and people do the best they can. Comforted by her acceptance, Frank declares his feelings, and Vivian reciprocates. Vivian describes their exchange: “‘I can’t live without you, Vivian,’ […] ‘Good. You’ll never have to.’ And that, Angela, was the closest your father and I ever came to saying I love you” (446).

Vivian advances in her narrative to the 1960s. During this decade, Peg dies from emphysema. Olive volunteers her time at a nearby church to recover from her grief. Marjorie continues to manage L’Atelier, while frail little Nathan goes to a Quaker school to continue his studies in a safe atmosphere. The bridal shop business booms because the hippies of the sixties embrace Vivian’s vintage designs just as their parents did.

Vivian observes wryly that the sexual revolution, lesbianism, feminism, single motherhood, and nonviolence had already been experienced by her little circle years earlier. She says, “With the greatest of pride, I was able to look out across all the cultural upheavals and transformations of the 1960s, and know this: My people got there first” (449).

Much to Vivian’s surprise, Frank asks her to design a wedding dress for Angela. His daughter is now an independent woman of twenty-nine. She has earned a doctorate in psychology and is marrying a black man. Vivian isn’t at all sure that Angela will relish the idea of a traditional gown, but the two women meet face-to-face in L’Atelier to discuss the matter. Angela grows intrigued by Vivian’s design suggestions and consents to let her design a dress.

While they talk, Angela asks how Vivian came to know her father. Vivian admits that she stretched the truth at the time and only said Frank and Walter were friends during the war. When Angela realizes that Vivian lost her brother during the Franklin catastrophe, she offers sympathy. Vivian is touched by Angela’s kindness. To show her gratitude, she makes every stitch of the gown herself and sews one of her own grandmother’s pearls into the neckline.

In December of 1977, Vivian receives a letter from Angela informing her that Frank died suddenly of a heart attack. Vivian is devastated by the news, though her daily life seems much the same to a casual observer. She can no longer roam the city at night and feels her world has become constricted as a result. Over the years that follow, she adjusts. Her work continues as do her love affairs. Vivian tries to give Angela a definitive answer about what Frank meant to her. She says:

Other people have always been perfectly nice and kind, don’t get me wrong, but nobody was him. Nobody could ever be like that bottomless well of a man—that walking confessional booth who could absorb whatever you told him without judgment or alarm. (463)

By the time Vivian concludes her narrative, she is eighty-nine years old. She observes that it’s harder to find people left who share memories of the entire scope of her life. “As the years pass—there comes to be a terrible shortage of your people. The ones you loved. The ones who knew the people that you both loved. The ones who know your whole history” (466). Because so few old friends remain, Vivian offers her friendship to Angela. She comments that in addition to being good at sewing and sex, she’s also quite a good friend. She concludes her story by saying, “I don’t know how much longer I will be here, of course—but as long as I remain on this earth, my dear Angela, I am yours” (466).