Marilyn, pt. 3

To folks from small towns like this one, New York City can feel like a different planet. I cannot say anything new or better about the city, and though I have been to cities I liked better than New York, there is nothing like walking its broad avenues and feeling the welling excitement that history is at your feet, that you are strolling through the modern capital of the world. Glass towers reaching above, cabs hustling by, trains thundering deep beneath--it can be overwhelming. Or captivating.

"Intoxicating," is how Marilyn Coolidge put it, to be exact. "I have four months to live in New York. It is too much and too little; a casual tourist might come to the city and make a day of it and see a myriad destinations and feel satisfied that he had seen New York. I, however, can't seem to pass a single corner without noticing a nook of some kind and inquiring about its story. I am afraid that four months will not be able to afford me the time to explore and learn about this city the way that would satisfy my curiosity."

She wrote these words in fine blue ink in her diary--one of several volumes she completed over the years of her younger life. Later, when she married, she packed them away, and decades later, when I came to Confluence and met Vic, I learned he had kept them in the back room of his shop downtown. Reading these journals is alternatively fascinating and voyeuristic. I am embarrassed at such an intimate disclosure of Marilyn's early adulthood--no one keeps a diary with the intentions of it falling into the hands of a rotten journalist fifty years later--but I am grateful that it allows a clearer account of the time she spent away from Confluence.

Marilyn lived in an apartment with two other girls from Bryn Mawr in Manhattan's Upper East Side. Lots of college students lived there, and she made friends quickly. "I love the girls in my building," she wrote, "but I have yet to meet a single one from New York. Everyone on my floor seems to have come here from somewhere else. We have such fun, though. Madam Harrison, who runs the building, is entirely more enlightened than any of the dormitory mothers back at school. We can often come and go as we please, and occasionally one of the girls even manages to sneak back a boy or some other contraband!"

She wrote that boys could often gain entry via the service entrance to the building, and while she never tried it, she was quite curious what it would mean to bring a boy home. She wasn't a prude as far as I could tell, but her small-town background weighed heavily on her: "If I were never going home, I cannot imagine the trouble I'd find in a city like this."

Late in the fall, Marilyn went with a group of girls to The Village Vanguard. (I have relished the chance to read her account of this legendary spot.) They listened to jazz and watched the intellectuals, and later there were Beat poets who read. Several of the girls paired up with boys.

"Alice had Jerry and Kitty had Dan. Well, Estelle and I had Vince and Tom, and neither of us could figure out which boy wanted which girl. Alice and Kitty decided to leave with their dates, and none of us could hear much over the band anyway, so during one of the breaks Estelle managed to convince the boys to take us down the street to a place called The Spot for drinks.

"The Spot was jammed, so we walked down a bit to the Washington Square Hotel and sat at the bar. I wasn't having a bad time, but I started to feel bored with Vince or Tom or whichever one was supposed to be courting me. Estelle seemed just fine with them both, and soon I began to feel that perhaps they were both interested in her!

I excused myself, walked to the lobby, and sat down on one of the great leather chairs they had near the fireplace. I imagined Estelle would come out sooner or later, and I would find my way home. I was tired."

Before she knew it, though, a man had taken the seat across from her.

"Are you waiting for someone?" he asked.

Marilyn was startled from her thoughts. "Excuse me?"

"I was just wondering if you were waiting to meet someone," he repeated.

"Well, not exactly," she replied, looking him over. He wore a dark wool suit, a blue tie, and expensive-looking shoes that reminded her of her father's.

"In that case," he said, standing up, "it would be my pleasure to buy you a drink. Have you ever been to the bar here?"

"I just came from there," she laughed. "My roommate is in the process of choosing a boy, I believe."

A glint of mischief came into his eyes. "If we go back in, then, we will have to take great care to avoid being spotted," he quipped. "Come on," he said, taking her hand. "I know the perfect hiding spot."

He led her to the back corner, where they sat in a plush velvet booth, side by side, looking out towards the bar. He ordered their drinks and lit a cigarette.

"I'll start. I'm Vic," he said.

"I'm Marilyn."

And so it was that, there in the corner of the Washington Square Hotel bar sat the cradle of their marriage. He was older, sophisticated, and a good drinker. She was pretty, new to town, and well aware that he had a mind to take her back to his apartment. Still, she was fascinated:

"Everything Vic told me seemed to tell me something else. He was the son of Italian-Americans who lived in Brooklyn. He went to Princeton on a football scholarship. He had three brothers and no sisters. His family owned a small chain of department stores. He liked modern music but said he loved hearing his mother sing more than anything. He was modest but he liked nice things, and he had a nice place across town he'd love to show me sometime.

"It was," Marilyn wrote the next day, "rather tempting."

Soon, though, Estelle figured out that Marilyn was there in the bar with her, and together they found their way back to Madam Harrison's building. Vic showed up the very next afternoon on the concrete steps leading to the door. "You deserve to have a real New Yorker show you the city," he said. His car was waiting down the block.

to be continued...