Searching for Grace Kelly (32 page)

Laura felt her face flush. She felt embarrassed. “I . . . It feels silly to talk about it.”

“That's the problem with all of you girls,” Metzger said. “You all think you're the first ones to ever have your hearts broken. You look at us like we're ghosts who've never been in love or dreamed a dream. You look down on us. And on ‘the Women'—don't look so surprised, of course we know you call them that—and you think you're so much smarter than we are. When the only thing you really are is younger and luckier.”

Laura stayed silent. How were you supposed to answer that type of withering charge? She had come here under the pretense of getting comfort from an unexpected corner and now felt under siege. Perhaps sensing this, Metzger did something unexpected: She reached over and placed her hand on Laura's arm. “Tell me what happened,” she said. “You'll feel better.”

And just like that, out it came, like a wave crashing across a jetty. And not just the story of Box and Agnes Ford and the clandestine phone call, but all of it: Marmy, Pete, Mrs. Blackwell and
Mademoiselle
, her delusions of a grand marriage, her desire to be a writer, her fear that she would never be that writer at all.

Thirty-five minutes and two humiliating outbursts of tears later, Laura sat, swirling the tea leaves at the bottom of her cup, waiting for Metzger to issue some sort of verdict. Was this the part where she told girls to pack up and go home, where she warned that not every young woman was ready for the big city, and sometimes it was better to return from whence you came?

Instead, Metzger started clearing the coffee table, slowly stacking the cups, napkins, and spoons back onto the tray. “Do you have any advice to offer?” Laura said. “I could sure use some.”

Metzger shook her head, the veil of inscrutability dropping once again. “Girls don't come to the Barbizon for answers, Laura.” It was the first time since she'd arrived in New York that Laura could recall Metzger addressing her by her first name. “They come to find out what questions they need to be asking.”

 

Laura stepped into the phone booth on the mezzanine and picked up the receiver, taking one more glance at her watch. If she timed it right, Marmy would be in the bath following her weekly mahjong game, where she threw out tiles as she casually character-assassinated any woman who'd recently earned her ire—
She
didn't buy any tickets to the charity ball
or
She
had the nerve to hire that caterer she knew
I
was going to use for
my
party
—with the ruthlessness of a military sniper.

Laura gave the operator the number and prayed that he, not she, would pick up.

“Hello.” His voice, deep and resonant, steadied her.

“Hi, Daddy.”

“Well, this is a nice surprise. Is everything all right?”

No, Daddy, it's not. My heart has just been smashed to pieces, and I'm alone and scared and unsure, and I just want you to tell me that it's all going to be okay, because you're my dad and you wouldn't let anything bad happen to me
. “I'm fine,” she said, choking on the second word. Why had she made this call at all? Now that he was on the line, the only thing she could think of was how desperately she wanted him off it.

“Have you been reading your stock tables?” he asked. She heard the rustling of a newspaper, pictured him standing at his desk in the library, flipping through the
Courant
or the
Times
. He did his catch-up reading at night. He'd taught her how to read the stock tables when she was only eight—“It's important to know how the world works, honey”—and loved to boast to his golfing partners about his daughter's growing knowledge of American commerce. But he loved her in a way that was palpable, in a way Marmy never could. Perhaps not unconditionally, but genuinely. The problem was his love was a moving target; out of nowhere he would say something or make a loving gesture that made your heart bounce, and then wouldn't do or say anything like it again for months. Years.

“Actually, Daddy,” she said, fighting to keep her composure, “I've . . . I've had a rather tough day. I just wanted to hear a friendly voice, I guess.”

Ask, Daddy, please ask why. Please, let me tell you. Please. I don't know why I need you to do this right now, but I do.

“Well, that's New York for you, kitten,” he replied. “Up one day, down the next. Now you can see why I decamped for Connecticut. Did you want to talk to your mother?”

Tears again began streaming down Laura's face. She managed to eke out, “No.”

“Everything else okay, then?” More rustling.

She cleared her throat. “Yes. I have to go. I'll see you soon. Bye.”

She hung up the receiver but kept clutching it as she sat in the quiet of the phone booth, the only sound that of her heaving tears.

 

“Pass the gravy, honey.”

Vivian reached over and handed the heavy china gravy boat to one of Nicky's uncles—Luigi? Or was that the one with the ill-fitting suspenders who did all the belching?—then returned to her veal. The food, at least the part she'd managed to eat, was delicious: hearty, homemade fare that was foreign to her existence flitting around New York restaurants.

They sat at a long table in a cluttered square dining room in Jersey City. Ugly, crowded, and smelly, it was the antithesis of Englewood, where she had spent all of those secret Wednesdays going out to play checkers with Sy at the old actors' home. Cranky Sy, always flirting with her. If he could see her now.

“She's not eating,” Nicky's mother was yelling from the other end of the table, jabbing her fork in the air. “Nicola, why does she not eat? She doesn't like my cooking? She is too skinny!”

“Ma, she's eating, she's eating,” Nicky replied. “Eat,” he whispered urgently. “You're insulting my mother!”

Vivian scooped up another forkful, inserted, chewed, smiled. Repeat. This was her life now. She followed orders. Nicky had murdered Act, as casually as he might have picked up his laundry. She had a recurring nightmare of Act, terrified as he was being slowly beaten to death, begging for his life, finally succumbing to the pain and telling Nicky about Vivian's appointment in the Bronx. Act's blood was on her hands. The bars may not have been visible, but she had now been sentenced to prison.

A woman in a flowered housedress seated near Uncle Luigi was complaining about the declining quality of tomatoes. A young man with an olive complexion and movie-star features issued a report on his first week working for the pencil factory, which was ultimately decreed a success. Two small children, a boy and a girl, chased one another around the table, ignoring commands to stop, until they got on Uncle Luigi's nerves so badly that he flung his hand out like a whip, walloping the boy in the face. No one said a word.

She and Nicky had come here, to “Sunday dinner,” to announce their engagement. Or, more specifically, for Nicky to announce their engagement. His family wouldn't be happy he'd knocked up a girl—a Brit, no less—but family was family and his mother, after she spent a suitable amount of time weeping and lamenting and screaming, would accept the situation and live with the shame showered down by the other women in her Brooklyn neighborhood. Nicky thought it might be good to start over someplace else, like here in Jersey City, where they could move into this house, with his grandparents. His grandmother could teach Vivian how to cook and clean. Then, after the baby was born and things were settled, they could look for their own place. Have more babies. Then they would be the ones having the Sunday dinners.

He'd told her all of this almost as an aside, as if it were all just a formality and he was just making sure she had her copy of the schedule. Her wants, her desires, had ceased to matter the day he'd caught her trying to rid her body of his progeny. From now on she would simply be an accessory, a necessary accoutrement to give birth to his children and iron his shirts and dress up. He'd have the bonus of a beautiful, exotic foreign wife who could sing “Jingle Bells” on key at the family Christmas party.

She had managed only one slight victory, and that was convincing him to hold off on the engagement news. It was, she gently argued, too much to spring her on his family for the first time, the report of their impending marriage and child on the way as well, all in one pasta-laden sitting. Better to get the family used to the idea of her first. He'd considered this much more thoughtfully than she'd imagined he would and had mercifully seen it not as a delay tactic or an affront to his masculine authority, but as a gesture of kindness and sensitivity to his family. After all, it was going to be bad enough that they were going to have to get married by a judge in the city hall, not at Our Lady of Loreto. At least not until Vivian had converted. He'd already made an appointment for her with Father Agnelli just after New Year's to get her started.

“Apologies,” she said, rising from the table. Almost immediately, the men rose with her. The Italians were nothing if not gallant. “I need to use the loo. Could you tell me where it is?”

“Huh? What's she talkin' about?” Nicky's mother shouted.

“The bathroom, Ma,” Nicky said. “Top of the stairs.”

Vivian could still hear Mrs. Accardi as she ascended the steps. “. . . don't understand half the words that come out of that girl's mouth.”

“She seems a little uppity, if you ask me,” a thin voice said. “She thinks she's Deborah Kerr.”

“Oh, I
loved
her in
From Here to Eternity
!” squealed the cousin with the bad teeth.

“What does a guy have to do to get more rigatoni?” Uncle Luigi complained.

Vivian entered the tiny bathroom and closed the door. Standing at the sink, she willed herself to be sick. At least that way she might be able to net an opportunity to lie down or, better yet, to leave.

She took a long look at her reflection in the mirror. Her complexion, once smooth and snowy white, was now ashy. Her face was slightly rounder, and would get rounder still as the months wore on. But it was her eyes that gave her away. They were hollow, vacant.

Dead.

You know what you have to do
, she told herself.
There's only one way out of this. Be smart. Make a plan.

Don't be afraid.

December 1955

 

“I hate holiday travel,” Dolly said as she slid her bulky powder-blue suitcase next to her. She began unbuttoning her coat. “I don't understand how people do it effortlessly.”

“They have help,” Laura replied, placing her own luggage and hatbox to her left as she flung her coat onto the back of the adjoining chair. “They hire people to carry their bags for them.”

“That'll be you soon enough,” Dolly smirked. “Mrs. Benjamin Barnes will not be hauling her own luggage all over Europe.”

Laura nodded slightly, looked away. She began pulling off her gloves.

Maybe it's time to tell her
, she thought.
If not now, when?

“You know, now that you mention that,” Laura started, “there's been—”

“Well, hello there!” Dolly exclaimed, looking over Laura's shoulder. Laura turned to see Ruth and Miriam approaching their table. “I thought you girls had already skedaddled out of town!”

“That was the plan,” Ruth said wryly, “but this one couldn't get off work early.” Miriam, whose family was in Nebraska, was going to be spending Christmas with Ruth's clan in South Norwalk. The pair had stopped in here, at the Oyster Bar inside Grand Central, for a quick round of Gibsons. “I'm just keeping Laura company until her train,” Dolly said, “then I am going to haul myself over to Penn to catch my own back to Utica. Come join us!”

Mercifully, the two girls demurred, and after half-hugs and a promise to get together for dinner after New Year's, they continued on their travels. “Sorry,” Dolly said, turning back to Laura. “Were you about to say something?”

“Nothing important.” The waiter came with menus, and they ordered drinks. “I love the fact that we're sitting in the Oyster Bar getting ready to go home for Christmas,” Dolly said as she scanned the offerings. “It seems so . . . continental.”

Laura measured her across the table. What an odd duck Dolly could be. It had been over a month since she'd handed her Jack's address and told her to get some answers, and yet Dolly—who couldn't keep her mouth shut if you surgically stitched it so—hadn't mentioned it. She'd been growing her hair out and she actually looked a bit more slender, a sign her eating binges had abated if not disappeared altogether. Laura had asked Dolly about all of it, the trip to Yonkers and the subsequent new look, only to be met with an airy response that it was best for everyone to just move on, and that was what she was doing. Discussion over.

And really, what right did she have to pry? She was holding on to her own secret. Both Dolly and Vivian had remarked that they hadn't seen Box at the Barbizon of late, that Laura didn't seem to be going out as much. She, too, had produced her own dismissive, catchall excuse, that the holiday season was madness when you ran a department store. This had been enough to explain Box's absence for the last few weeks. Though it wouldn't hold after Christmas was over.

He'd come to the Barbizon a few days after the disastrous dinner that never was, as she knew he would. She hadn't returned his calls or acknowledged the two bouquets of flowers he'd sent, each with a plaintive note asking for a chance to explain. Finally one afternoon a girl Laura had never seen before knocked at her door, carefully reciting that Box was in the lobby and to tell her that he was going to stay there and wait for her as long as it took, because she had to leave the building sometime. The girl had then broken out in an awkward smile, as if she'd just recited the winning word in a spelling bee.