ALSO BY ELIZABETH GILBERT
RIVERHEAD BOOKS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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Copyright © 2019 by Elizabeth Gilbert
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gilbert, Elizabeth, 1969– author.
Title: City of girls / Elizabeth Gilbert.
Description: New York : Riverhead Books, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019009003 (print) | LCCN 2019011748 (ebook) | ISBN 9780698408326 (ebook) | ISBN 9781594634734 (hardcover)
Subjects: | GSAFD: Love stories.
Classification: LCC PS3557.I3415 (ebook) | LCC PS3557.I3415 C58 2019 (print) | DCC 813/.54–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019009003
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design: Grace Han
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CONTENTS
New York City, April 2010
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
—COLETTE
NEW YORK CITY, APRIL 2010
I received a letter from his daughter the other day.
Angela.
I’d thought about Angela many times over the years, but this was only our third interaction.
The first was when I’d made her wedding dress, back in 1971.
The second was when she’d written to tell me that her father had died. That was in 1977.
Now she was writing to let me know that her mother had just passed away. I’m not sure how Angela expected me to receive this news. She might have guessed it would throw me for a loop. That said, I don’t suspect malice on her part. Angela is not constructed that way. She’s a good person. More important, an interesting one.
I was awfully surprised, though, to hear that Angela’s mother had lasted this long. I’d assumed the woman had died ages ago. God knows everyone else has. (But why should anyone’s longevity surprise me, when I myself have clung to existence like a barnacle to a boat bottom? I can’t be the only ancient woman still tottering around New York City, absolutely refusing to abandon either her life or her real estate.)
It was the last line of Angela’s letter, though, that impacted me the most.
“Vivian,” Angela wrote, “given that my mother has passed away, I wonder if you might now feel comfortable telling me what you were to my father?”
Well, then.
What was I to her father?
Only he could have answered that question. And since he never chose to discuss me with his daughter, it’s not my place to tell Angela what I was to him.
I can, however, tell her what he was to me.
ONE
In the summer of 1940, when I was nineteen years old and an idiot, my parents sent me to live with my Aunt Peg, who owned a theater company in New York City.
