The Road Taken, page 8
She had made a new best friend here in New York, the sweet-faced young woman who lived next door with her businessman husband and two small children. Her friend’s name was Elsie, the same as that of her long-dead friend from childhood. The moment Rose met this new Elsie, Elsie Wilder, she had exclaimed, “This is destiny!” If they had not been the same age and of similar background they would have been friends anyway. As it was, they visited each other every day, just dropping in, and sometimes, even though she had no children of her own, Rose went to the park with Elsie when she took her children there.
They sat on benches with the other young matrons, in the shadow of the Arch, and talked. Right now the hot topic under discussion was the Monkey Trial, where a teacher named Scopes had been trying to teach Darwin’s theory of evolution to his schoolchildren in Dayton, Tennessee, and had been arrested. It was the first trial ever to be broadcast live on the radio, and Rose and Elsie were fascinated.
“Of course men are descended from monkeys,” Elsie said. “Just look at my husband.”
“Oh, how could you!” Rose said, and they both laughed, because her husband, if truth be told, did look like a very clean, well-dressed, member of that under species.
“I can’t wait until he’s older and his hairline recedes,” Elsie mused. “Of course, it might not! Now, you mustn’t tell him what I said.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Was Elsie “in love” with her husband? Or was she like Rose? They never discussed it.
Every Sunday Rose telephoned her family. She worried about her father, who sometimes complained of aches and pains and shortness of breath; but that had been going on for a long time and the doctor said he was strong as an ox, Celia reassured her. “I’ll tell you if anything happens,” Celia said. “Don’t worry. Enjoy your new life.” If Rose didn’t know better she would think that Celia was trying to get rid of her.
Celia, of course, was well. Daisy and Harriette had recently become boy crazy. Poor Maude had suffered a miscarriage and was very upset. Too many children too quickly, Rose thought, but said nothing. Why couldn’t Maude just enjoy the children she had? Large families were so old-fashioned.
Hugh had refused to apply to law school, which had greatly disappointed Papa and given Celia new ammunition to use against him. His marks were not good enough for him to have been accepted anyway. He had not yet decided on a career. Rose could sense the tension when she spoke to any of them. In his family’s eyes he was a disappointment, but never in hers. She loved him, she wanted to protect him, and she worried about him.
He had completed his final year at college. His exams were over, and he announced that he was finally coming to visit Rose in New York during the free time he had before graduation. He would be the first member of the family to come. She was overjoyed, because, for one thing, since she and Ben had missed Christmas in Bristol because of their honeymoon, and Easter because Ben had insisted she see the famous Easter Parade, she had been feeling a little nostalgic and neglected.
“I’ll stay for a week,” Hugh said. “Can you stand me for a week?”
“For longer,” Rose said. “Stay forever.”
“Don’t say that so lightly, because I might.”
When he came she took him everywhere, showing him this city she loved. He loved it too. He looked like someone who had awakened from a bad dream and was relieved to find he was safe in his own bed again. He was a tireless tourist, and wore her out. At night, after he had eaten dinner with her and Ben at home, he would go out alone to explore, and even if they had all been to a restaurant or a club, Hugh was too restless to go back home with them.
“I’ll just take a walk,” he would say. “Don’t wait up for me.”
“Oh, to be young,” Ben said. They both knew Hugh sometimes stayed out all night.
The day he was to leave Rose decided it was time to have a talk with her brother about his life. She took him to Washington Square Park and they sat on a bench in the sun. “If you could do anything you wanted, anything that suited you,” she said, “not what suited other people, but just you, what would it be?”
His eyes filled with tears, and then he composed himself and smiled. “Anything I want?”
“Yes.”
“I would move to New York the moment I graduated, and live with you if you’ll let me, and I would work in Greenwich Village in an antique store.”
An antique store? “All right,” Rose said, trying not to seem surprised. “Is there a living in that?”
“Of course. I’ve already found the place. They said they would hire me as soon as I get back here. And I’d contribute to the household expenses, of course. Rose, I can’t live with Celia and Papa anymore. She hates me. She always has.”
“Oh no, she doesn’t hate you.”
“She does,” Hugh said. “She can’t wait to get me out of there so she can redecorate again.”
When Rose thought about Hugh living here with them she realized how happy it made her. It was customary for an unmarried sibling to live with a married one if it was not possible to live with one’s parents, and she knew Ben wouldn’t object. They would have a real family again, the family of her childhood. And their house was large enough so that Hugh could live in the guest suite on the first floor, away from them, enabling everyone to have enough privacy.
“I’ve changed my life,” she said. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have the same chance.”
How his face lit up when she said that! It was almost as if she had rescued him, although she could not imagine from what.
Chapter Nine
For most of his adult life now, although he seemed to fit in more at college than he ever had before, Hugh felt he was probably the loneliest person on earth. His family, of course, did not, could not,be allowed to know his tumultuous inner thoughts, and neither, of course, could the few new friends he had finally made at Brown. His first year he had been secretly and miserably in love with his roommate, George, a brilliant premed student, athlete, and dark-haired Adonis, who went out with girls and didn’t know that every night the young man in the next bed was listening to his breathing and timing it to his own. Whatever his roommate did Hugh copied; he wanted to dress like him, talk like him, have that practiced ease with people. But he knew he never would. And in sophomore year, George went off to share a suite with three other young men, all of whom were normal, and left Hugh behind. He didn’t even ask Hugh if he wanted to join them. From then on Hugh roomed alone.
He was invisible . . . or perhaps too visible. He knew what he was. Sometimes he thought Celia knew, or at least suspected, because she had a cruel tongue where he was concerned. He was afraid she would tell his father and turn his father against him, although his father seemed endlessly forgiving and oblivious. His father didn’t want to know, and perhaps he wouldn’t have understood what being a “fairy” meant even if he did know. His father came from another world, where things were ordered and simple. If Hugh could have forced himself to go to law school to please his father he would have, but he could barely stay at college because he felt like such a misfit.
Having his own room in the dorm had two advantages. He could cry secretly when the feeling that his life wasn’t worth living came over him, and he could buy and wear women’s clothes. He had makeup too; rouge, lipstick, powder, and a black liner for his eyes. At night when everyone else was having a good time doing all the things that normal college students did, having a social life, studying together, going out, Hugh would be in his room with the door locked, engulfed in fantasies.
He had no idea who he was or what he was, but he knew that the makeup and the tea gowns made him float off into that invented world where he was lovely and everyone liked him. He even had a secret name for himself, Camille. The lady of the camellias, the tragic one who coughed herself to death. His style of clothing was eclectic. He did well as a flapper because he was lean and without breasts (real girls had to bind their breasts to look right in those dresses), and he also favored an old-fashioned look. For a while he had thought of calling himself Lillian Russell, but discarded that. He tried different hair styles, and let his hair grow a little longer than was usual for a man, so that he could have more latitude. It was not that he wanted to be a woman, because he knew he was a man. It was the clothes he liked, the masquerade. It made him feel free, even while it chained him more and more to guilt and self-hatred, because he knew it was wrong.
No one would ever understand, because he could hardly understand it himself.
Freud was hot; people talked about complexes even when they didn’t have any. It was all too easy to be an armchair psychiatrist. But they didn’t talk about Hugh’s predilection, and he suspected it would only appear in much more ominous books; the works of Kraft-Ebbing or Havelock Ellis, which the psychology majors read. He found these books in the university library, but after reading a few pages he was so upset at the pain and torment people inflicted on innocent little children that he had to give them back, feeling nauseated. Who knew there were so many evil people in the world? There were words people had for him and his kind—pervert, invert, and androgyne were the more civil ones—but he was an angel compared to some of those parents and governesses in the textbooks. Yes, he knew it would hurt his family terribly to know how strange he was, but he wasn’t really hurting anyone. I am kind, Hugh told himself. I am good. I am lost. I am doomed. What will become of me?
And then came the miracle. When he went to see his sister Rose in Greenwich Village, everything fell into place. He went from damned to saved in a few short days. There were people here like him, who would accept him. It was not hard to seek them out. When he went out on his own at night he discovered a world so magical, so outrageous, so comforting, that it seemed not only an alternate reality but the only real one. Men wore makeup—they called it paint—and styled their long hair. They shrieked and giggled and joked, and they were so funny. They were open about everything: They talked about their dates, their boyfriends, the sexy and sometimes available men from the Brooklyn Fire Department, their engagements and broken hearts. For the first time in his life Hugh made friends immediately.
His friends had women’s names as he did: Lady Clifford, Nazimova, Zazu. It was all in the spirit of high camp. He found a private gay club on Christopher Street, where the admission fee was a steep five dollars, but well worth it, and his new friends took him to another gay club, more a restaurant, not private—but who else but a fairy would want to go there?—called Paul and Joe’s. These clubs were small and always packed. Gus, the “hostess” at Paul and Joe’s, was friendly to him. Hugh brought his makeup with him from home, and put it on in the bathroom. He always wore a man’s suit, but he carried a compact for touchups. His friends told him there would be a costume ball soon at Webster Hall, the huge old meeting hall, and told him not to miss it; they were all going to be in drag, and there would be half-naked men in togas, made of bedsheets, to swoon over.
There was the Everard Baths if you wanted willing, anonymous sex, even orgies, or perhaps to find love. He learned what a glory hole was. Fairyland, as he thought of it, even had its own language.
“Dearie,” the rouged and lipsticked men in the gay clubs called each other. “Dearie, people who live in glass houses should undress in the dark!” “Dearie, if you associate with garbage you’ll get flies!” “Dearie, just look at that pathetic old queen!”
In the clubs after eleven o’clock the Broadway chorus dancers would arrive from their shows at the Winter Garden, or from Vanities, or the Music Box Revue, flouncing, effeminate, and happy. Some of them had sugar daddies, just like girls did. And then after midnight everyone would go uptown to 58th Street and Fifth Avenue, to Childs restaurant, the largest of the famous chain, for coffee and breakfast. In the small hours of the morning, here in New York, Bristol seemed as far away as if Hugh had never lived there.
As soon as he graduated from Brown, Hugh packed up all his things and took the train to New York. His father looked bewildered, and Celia, fixing him with her gimlet eyes, looked smug. His job at the antique store, Montezuma, was waiting for him. His friend Zazu, from the clubs, an older man who looked better without makeup, was the proprietor. Hugh settled into his comfortable bedroom, with adjoining bath, on the ground floor of Rose’s house. His brother-in-law Ben, who was a generous man, made him feel welcome because he knew how much it meant to Rose. Hugh thought again, as he often did lately, that Rose was lucky to have such a nice husband.
Hugh unpacked his women’s clothes, and his lingerie, and his makeup, and put them away. He knew no one would spy on him. When he went out he would dress at a friend’s house so Rose and Ben would never know. Lots of drag queens who lived with their families did that.
Greenwich Village was full of small single rooms to rent, for bachelors, gays and lesbians, and Bohemians, people who had left the stultifying forbidding life of their small towns to gravitate to New York; but he wouldn’t dream of living in a rooming house when he had a family. He was safe here, as happy as he had been when he was a child, when the world was good and he had a place in it, before he knew anything.
Chapter Ten
In 1928 Rose and Ben joyfully welcomed their first child, their daughter Peggy Ann. She was a placid and beautiful infant, with blond curls, and the blue eyes that ran in Rose’s family. Rose weighed her every week and dutifully inscribed each weight in Peggy’s pink baby book. The baby book also gave helpful hints, which followed the child-rearing edicts of the day, and Rose followed them.
“Don’t let Baby suck finger, pacifier, etc. It causes irregular teeth, etc., later. Never play with Baby till over six months—then, seldom. Excitement harms. Baby Must Have: Regular Hours for Sleeping, Feeding, etc. Good habits are as easy to form as bad ones. Protection from Contagion—No Kissing on mouth or hands! ‘Colds’ or disease never allowed near. Keep off floor—Dirt, Germs, Danger! Whooping-cough is often fatal to infants.”
Peggy’s first words were Dada and Tick-tock. She said Mama much later. Rose felt a little hurt. She wondered if it was because she, the reluctantly strict mother, let Peggy scream for food or attention when it was not time to give them to her, and that Ben, the kindhearted father, couldn’t bear to hear these cries and went into the room to pick her up.
“She’s a Daddy’s girl,” Ben said, pleased.
But of course he couldn’t nurse her, so Rose knew she was still number one. Now when she went to the park with Elsie and the other mothers, she had her own baby, and was now a true member of the club.
Hugh brought little Peggy a Victorian English highchair from his shop. You could take it apart when the baby was older and put it together again to become a small chair and table for meals. He was devoted to his niece, and loved to play with her during the brief periods when the book said it was allowed.
Since travel was not recommended for small children because of all the threatening and unknown germs that might be encountered, William and Celia made their first trip to New York to see their new grandchild. Rose and Ben took them to a few nice restaurants, but not to any speakeasies, and Rose took them to see the sights. The economy was booming, the city was prosperous, and all sorts of new tunnels and highways had been built and were being built, so Manhattan was no longer in any way an isolated island. The Smiths were only two of a stream of tourists. Celia was thrilled with everything, but Rose had the feeling that her father was only being good-natured when he smiled as she dragged them around. She could see he had lost so much of his energy in these later years, and when they left he said, “New York is too busy for me.”
“Not for me,” Celia said. “I could live here easily. We’ll be back.”
“I hope not,” Hugh said when she was gone.
But whether or not they would come back was not an issue, because in the fall the stock market crashed. People were jumping out of windows. Fortunes, that had only existed on paper because they had been bought on margin, were now lost. Since wills always had to be written and executed, Ben did not lose his job, but he had to take a cut in pay. There was only enough money for essentials now. Hugh’s antique shop became more of an upscale secondhand store, as people were forced to sell their cherished belongings to eat and pay the rent. Maude and Walter, with four growing children to feed, sold their car, and Maude tearfully told Rose on the phone that she’d had an abortion. In fact, illegal abortions soared, and the disguised birth control ads became more specific, if you knew what you were looking for. Lysol now promised “Complete freedom from fear.”
People who knew how simply stopped having babies. An only child was the norm, two was the sign of a family with some money. But in the midst of these dark days Rose decided she had to have another child before she got too old. She didn’t want Peggy to grow up alone. She’d had a wonderful family to grow up with, and what if something happened to her the way it had to her mother? Peggy would be all by herself. If Ben remarried, who knew what the woman would be like? Rose couldn’t help worrying. It seemed she worried about everything lately, and who would not?
Their second child, another girl, who looked just like Peggy, was born in 1931. They named her Joan, one of the most popular names of the year. There were four other Joans in the hospital when Rose was there. She liked giving her child a modern name; Joan would be a modern woman.
