Sailing Apart

After she woke up in Victor’s downtown apartment, Marilyn felt it was safe to say the two were an item. “I enjoy his company very much,” she wrote in her diary, “but I’m wary of how easily he talks me into things.”

There was an instance of this occurring when Vic asked her to accompany him on a boating trip down the Hudson. A friend of his had bought a thirty-seven footer named Cesario, and he needed to bring it down river to be docked at the athletic club where he was a member. Marilyn, though athletic and fit, wasn’t much of a sailor, but she agreed to make the trip.

Marilyn Coolidge was used to being around wealth. She had seen her share of country estates and summer houses and stables. Her father rarely indulged his family with extravagance, though, and most any pleasures of travel came thanks to the kindness of family friends. What her father successfully avoided, and what he had an extraordinary distaste for, was publicity. He avoided the Confluence Spectator’s reporters (both of them) whenever he argued a case in the downtown courthouse. He wrote more than once to its publishers and editors following a couple of filler stories regarding the goings-on in town, in which it was reported that the Coolidge family served on the Confluence Presbyterian finance committee.

So it was with a natural uneasiness that Marilyn regarded a photographer accompanying them on the trip—-even though he was there to take pictures of the boat’s new owner, who was well-known in Manhattan gossip. Still, the weather was lovely—-sunny and warm—-and Vic brought her a drink to help her relax.

More than once she caught Victor eyeing her; she wore a bathing suit and a white, cotton wrap. Her tan legs shone in the light. And the Hudson was breathtaking. Marilyn had never been down the valley before.

The boat’s new owner had brought a lady friend, Annette, and she made a fair amount of conversation with Marilyn. The quartet and the photographer took a picnic lunch on the deck, sandwiches, fruit, and wine. Marilyn noticed that Vic had a natural sense around the sailboat, fixing ropes with ease and keeping his balance from bow to stern.

As the Manhattan skyline came into view, she walked up to the bow to sit with Vic, who was sunning himself and finishing the wine. He wore dark aviator sunglasses, the kind pilots wore in the war.

“What do you think?” he asked her.

“I think I could get used to this,” she said. The boat squared on a swell, and water sprayed up on their legs. She laughed.

“I’m very glad you weren’t waiting for someone,” he said a minute or so later.

“I’m sorry?”

“At the bar in Washington Square,” he said. “I’d watched you for a while before I’d worked up the courage to go over and introduce myself. I just knew that as soon as I walked over and sat down beside you, another man would’ve come along and we really would’ve had a start.”

She caught his eye behind his glasses. “I’m glad you sat down,” she said, reaching over to rub his leg. I’ve had an awfully fun time with you.”

Just then, the boat lurched over a swell from a passing cargo ship, plunging deep into its wake before climbing back out of its trough. The bow pointed skyward before slamming down straight on the water, and in the process Marilyn was tossed up in the air—-and toward the rail. Quickly, though, she felt the firm hold of Victor as he grabbed her mid-air and pulled her down onto his lap. The result, with Victor prone on the deck and Marilyn sideways on top of him, made a perfect picture, and the photographer quickly snapped it.

That very photograph, which would later run on the back page of the newspaper with a feature story on the sailing socialite, begat two important things. First, it announced to tens of thousands of readers that the youngest son of the Salarino family—-himself, no doubt, the focus of occasional rumors from the nouveau riche realm-—had found himself a girlfriend with an impressive pedigree to boot. And second, it earned Marilyn a harsh rebuke from the administrators at Bryn Mawr, who warned her that the scandalous behavior she portrayed in the newspaper picture was unbecoming of a young lady of her stature. From that point, her social freedoms were quite limited.

“Embarrassing as it is,” she confided to her journal, “it’s turned my life awfully boring.”

Having been found unfit for duty, the lady who ran the house, Madam Harrison, was relieved of her duties, and her replacement, Mrs. Allison, watched after the girls with a much less forgiving eye. Soon, Marilyn felt that her mistake had inadvertently brought a burden on all of her housemates.

She still managed to see Victor, but her visits were relegated to the daytime hours. As tempted as she was to cut classes, she knew it would irritate the situation further, and the punishment, as she had been assured by the dean of students, would be far worse upon a second offense.

“I am a hopeless schoolgirl, and I’m afraid that I’ve taken quite a liking to Victor at exactly the wrong moment,” she wrote. “I find myself daydreaming about him often. It doesn’t help anything. We have managed to see each other at lunch at least three or four times a week. One afternoon, he took me to the park, and we kissed for an entire hour. Every time he has to drop me back for classes, I feel crestfallen.”

“To make matters worse,” she continued, “my father let me know in a letter today that the Dean told him all about the newspaper story and picture. I could feel the disappointment in his words in my very own guts.”

And so it was that Marilyn’s time in New York, which had started with great anticipation and excitement, quickly grew to a close with the competing feelings of boredom and longing. She ate her suppers alone in her room, heartbroken and lonely. The noise from the streets outside only deepened the feeling that she was missing out on so much, that on just the other side of the glass, there was a life waiting for her.

Becoming Lovers

Marilyn had never felt so drunk in her life.

It had started with a drink with Victor two hours ago at dinner. He'd picked her up in a flashy convertible, and they'd sped off to a restaurant she'd never heard of, and before she knew it, she'd had one glass of wine, and then another, and then a third, and that was enough to put her on her way.

She fought off the urge to panic, but the sense that something was very wrong overwhelmed her. Everyone at the bar was smiling at her. Victor was telling jokes. She heard every fourth or fifth word, and she smiled and tried to keep her eyes level and laugh when everyone else was laughing. It worried her that she might be part of the jokes.

But Victor wouldn't do that--he wouldn't make fun of her. She was his date, and this was their third or fourth date, or something like that anyway. Marilyn tried to slow her mind down long enough to count their dates. The room spun when she closed her eyes. She tried instead to count how many drinks she'd had.

Then there was an arm around her waist, and it was Victor's, and through the wine sloshing through her brain she heard him say she was awfully pretty. He held her hand as she stood up and pulled her close so she wouldn't wobble. That felt good, she thought. It made her feel better.

The car was a few blocks away, so they began walking down the sidewalk. The city seemed like an underwater electric show. Marilyn saw two men approach them. Neither looked safe. She heard one of them ask Victor for some money, and Victor smiled and motioned to her, and told them tomorrow night maybe. They didn't look happy, but they kept walking. When Marilyn and Victor reached the corner, she looked back to make sure the men hadn't followed them.

"Don't worry," she heard Victor say.

"I think they're following us and I don't know how much they'd want anyway," she slurred.

"Marilyn," he said, and when she looked up, he kissed her, and suddenly everything sped back up again--the street, the noise, the blinking lights--as if someone had pulled the drain plug on her drunkenness. The glimpse of lucidity turned into a high.

And then they were back in the car, and she remembered seeing Times Square, and she remembered feeling like they were going somewhere new, and then she remembered this was where Victor lived.

***

Marilyn woke up the next morning feeling startled and lost. She didn't know where she was. The doors were in the wrong places. She was alone in bed.

It was a nice bed, though. She realized the clothes she was wearing weren't her own. Slowly, she stood up, and tip-toed barefoot across the rich, shag carpet toward the door. When she pushed it open, she saw Vic asleep on a sofa.

***

"I am ashamed, and yet I am fascinated," she later wrote in her journal. "What would my mother think? My father? Reverend Roberts? Everything that happened last night went against everything I've ever learned growing up about right and wrong, and yet nothing in my heart feels heavy."

"Instead, it all feels right."