Searching for Grace Kelly (35 page)

Vivian had been standing, immobile, the entire time, surveying the scene with the calm reserve she'd displayed all evening. Finally, she spoke. “Laura is right, Dolores.”

Laura took in a deep breath, slowly exhaled it.
Good, good. Vivian is focused on something else. Let's keep her focused on something else
. Laura spun around on her knees to face Dolly. “Honey, listen to me. You are a special, special girl. You're funny, and pretty, and smart, and the best friend a girl could ever ask for. Isn't she, Vivian?”

Vivian nodded. “Yes.”

“You need to take this as a learning experience on the road in life. Look at me: I had two great guys, and now I have none. I betrayed one, only to be betrayed by the other. But I'll learn from it. I'll know better for the next time.”

Dolly smiled ruefully. “That's because you know there will
be
a next time.”

It took all of Laura's strength not to lose her patience. She could almost hear the voice coming from inside Vivian's head:
You don't know problems, sweetie
.

But Dolly did know. “I'm sorry,” Dolly was saying, looking up at Vivian. “I know this must all seem so silly to you, when you have it so much worse. But that's life, isn't it? We all want someone else's life, someone else's problems, because they always seem so much better than our own. Vivian, I want you to know I have always admired you. Honest. Even when I was being nasty. Because you never lie. Ever. You always say what you think, and not many people do that. At least not many people I know. So I want to be honest with you back. This isn't as impossible as it looks. I know it probably feels impossible, and for a girl like you, with so much pizzazz, it must feel like you're going crazy inside. But you're not the first girl to ever be in this situation, to be having a baby, to have a jealous boyfriend. You don't believe it, but you have friends. You have Laura. And you also have me. For sure. I might not be the most swell girl you'll ever meet, but I bet I'm one of the most loyal. We won't let you down if you just let us help. Deep inside, you know we won't let you down.”

Laura had never felt so proud of anyone in her life.

She slid her arm back around Dolly. All of their eyes were watering from the cold; Laura had lost the feeling in her feet. She glanced up at Vivian's face, still placid and knowing. Standing there hovering above them, she looked almost beatific. “How about it, Vivian? Look at us: three girls, with three broken hearts, surrounded on all sides by the big city four days before Christmas, wondering what happened. But we're still here. We know we can deal with whatever comes our way.” She leaned forward, stretched out her hand. “Please, Vivian.
Please
.”

For the first time, Laura saw small droplets of uncertainty seep into the resignation in Vivian's face. “I . . . I don't know. It's so utterly hopeless.”

It was time to go for broke. “Don't you see? Don't you
see
?!” Laura said, leaping up to her feet. “That's it! Right there! It
seems
that way. But it
isn't
that way. You can't see it, because you're too far in it. But we can. We can see it. Let us see it for you. You have no hope. You must let us carry your hope for you. I swear, Vivian, I can have you in Connecticut in ninety minutes. And from there we can get you anywhere. He'll never find you. Nicky may have muscles, but my father has brains and money. You have to trust me.”

Laura took one tentative step closer, thrust her arm out again. “Take my hand, honey. Come on. It's okay. It's going to be okay.”

Vivian's face had turned wary, childlike, and Laura was surprised how much the metamorphosis of her expression jarred her. Vivian was the dame, the broad, the siren. Now all of that had been stripped away, revealing the frightened girl underneath. Dolly remained on her knees next to Laura, no doubt afraid to move a muscle, to interrupt the spell Laura had been casting. Laura could see Vivian's white-gloved hand balling into a fist, then opening again, over and over, as if by itself her hand itself was waging a war over which path to take.

They simply stood, looking at one another, saying nothing, their faces stinging in the frigid temperatures, Laura's arm beginning to shake from being extended so long. But she was winning. She could feel the tide turning, feel Vivian's resistance waning. She just had to be patient, wait it out. She would stand here with her arm extended all night if she had to.

“I left Nicky a card, too,” Vivian said quietly.

Laura tried not to show any reaction. But suddenly, the window of time for saving Vivian had just gotten a lot shorter.
Damn! Why did she have to leave
him
a note?
If Nicky had done what Laura had done, opened his card early, he could be on his way to the Barbizon this very minute. And there was no telling what he would do when he got here. They had to get Vivian off the terrace and out of the hotel. Now.

“Honey,” Laura said gently, “it's time to come now. Let us take care of you. It's okay. Come.” She thrust her arm out once more.

All of the anguish and conflict and doubt crisscrossed Vivian's face, until she haltingly took a step toward Laura.

She began to raise her hand.

A gust of wind whooshed in from behind Dolly and Laura, and they turned to watch the door to the terrace swing wildly open.

Laura whirled back around. “Vivian, it's nothing! No one's there! It's just the wind! Vivian!!”

But Vivian's mind crashed under the weight of the moment, of the stark, ugly reminder it provided, that no matter where she went, no matter who she became, no matter how much she tried to start over, Nicola Accardi would always be there, taunting her, haunting her, around every dark street corner, lurking underneath every sinister lamppost shadow. Even if he never found her, he would always be there, the threat that she would think about the first thing when she woke up every morning and before she closed her eyes at night. He would be the ghost who would follow her, and her child, forever. She couldn't live like that. She wouldn't live like that.

Vivian looked at Laura, her eyes brimming with tears. “I'm sorry,” she whispered.

Laura couldn't even hear her own screaming, even as she bolted toward the terrace ledge, Dolly yelling, wailing, scrambling to her feet behind her, as they watched Vivian, in one swift, fluid, brutal motion, swing her legs over the railing and drop away on the other side.

May 1956

 

They'd picked a diner in Chelsea to meet, primarily because Chelsea was a neighborhood with no shared memories between them. In all the months she'd lived in New York, Laura couldn't remember once being in Chelsea.

When she walked into the diner, she spied Dolly immediately, sitting at a back table by the window, sipping tea. As she headed toward her, Laura could see Dolly had lost a good deal of additional weight and immediately felt a pinch of guilt. During those periods when she'd thought of Dolly in these past few months, she'd invariably pictured her gorging on a tray of sweets. Clearly, quite the opposite had happened. Dolly looked positively gorgeous.

Dolly stood and they hugged. “It's so nice to see you,” Laura said. “You look absolutely wonderful.”

“It's okay to say you're surprised,” Dolly replied, settling back behind her tea. “I sure am.”

“What have you been doing?”

“Not eating,” Dolly said dryly. “As you know, I have always been the girl who turned to the bakery for support when the going got rough. But it turns out when the going gets downright catastrophic, I can't eat at all.” She looked up, artificially cheery. “And how are you?”

“Better,” Laura said. “At least I think better.”

It was hard to believe it had been only five months; it felt like years. Vivian's had not been the first jump in the history of the Barbizon, but it was the first in a long time, and beyond that it had all of the elements of high drama: the Stork Club profession (several papers had incorrectly identified Vivian as a showgirl, presumably because dead showgirls sold more papers), the gangster boyfriend, the city's chic dormitory for girls as the backdrop. The story had been all over the papers for weeks. Nicky had gone to jail on an unrelated matter, something to do with a shady deal in Hoboken, albeit briefly. He was now out on bail pending additional charges, which Laura hoped would include murder, but she doubted it. Vivian had been right about one thing: Guys like Nicky were always getting away with it.

The police had questioned Laura for hours. She had told them absolutely everything she could think of—about how scared Vivian had been, the pregnancy, how Nicky had evidently killed one of Vivian's friends—until Marmy and Dad had swooped into the police station, whisking her back to Connecticut. Marmy had actually been . . . warm. Of course, she'd also been living off of all the drama over canasta and mai tais ever since.

Dolly, fragile to begin with as that long night had unwound, had come completely unglued by the time it was over. After Vivian had plunged over the side, she'd disintegrated into utter hysteria, which didn't subside until the ambulance men had come and injected something into her arm, right there on the terrace. Laura was herded to the police station, Dolly driven to the hospital. It had taken weeks for Laura to track her down back in Utica. They'd sent a few letters, talked briefly on the phone to set up this little reunion. Dolly was en route to her aunt's in Brooklyn, where the Barbizon had sent her things. “I can't step foot back in that place,” Dolly had told her on the phone.

After Laura ordered a coffee, they began updating one another in greater detail. Laura relayed that she had returned to Smith, where the semester had just ended, and how nice it had been to be back in Northampton. Dolly talked about how she was finishing her Katie Gibbs certification at a local college near Syracuse, and how she had met a nice guy at the library she'd gone out with once and who “seems blissfully normal,” as she put it. Dolly asked Laura if she'd heard from Box and, because she could not help being Dolly, shared the unsolicited news that she'd recently seen a gossip column photo of Box and a shapely blonde, walking into a premiere at the Ziegfeld. Laura wondered how Agnes Ford felt about that. And was glad to note that she herself felt . . . nothing.

An awkward silence descended over the table once the preliminary catch-ups were over. Dolly was absently stirring her tea, looking out onto Twenty-Third Street, when she said, “Do you think about her much?”

“Every day,” Laura said.

Dolly sighed. “It's so strange, really. It comes on me at the oddest times. Like, I'll be on a bus looking out the window, or buying apple juice, or soaking in the tub, and she'll just come into my brain. That whole, horrible night comes into my brain.

“Do you think,” Dolly went on, “that it will ever stop hurting? Because I would like to believe there will be a day when I will be able to think about her without it hurting.”

“I'm not sure it will ever not hurt,” Laura said softly. “But I can only hope that, over time, it will hurt less. And the good memories will outweigh . . .” She trailed off.

Dolly was shaking her head. “I know it doesn't do any good to go over it anymore. I mean, I even went to see a shrink about it. Did I tell you that? I did. Just once, but I was so desperate I was willing to try anything. But basically he said what everyone says: ‘Time heals all wounds.' Sometimes I worry that I have no right to feel this way at all. I mean, it wasn't like she really even liked me.”

“She loved you.” Dolly's head jerked to attention, and their eyes met. “She wasn't good at showing it,” Laura continued. “Who knows why. Maybe because of her family. Or maybe that's just the way the British are. I don't know. But I do know she cared about you—about both of us—very deeply.”

“She didn't tell you the whole truth about Box and Agnes.”

“She didn't know the whole truth. I think she didn't say anything not to be cruel, but because she truly felt there are some things you have to learn for yourself. Which I did.”

“I don't know. I just keep thinking the same thought, over and over, that we should have been able to help her. Should have seen the signs. Should have done
something
—”

Laura cut her off. “You can't do this. It isn't like I haven't had those same internal monologues, over and over and over. I have. But you can't hold yourself responsible for other people's choices, even tragic ones. Vivian was nothing if not strong-willed. She was always going to live on her terms. And she was going to . . .” The remainder went unspoken.
She was going to die on her own terms, too
.

Out on the sidewalk, their goodbye felt stilted, awkward. They hugged again tightly, promised to call, promised to write. But as Laura watched Dolly walk up toward Eighth Avenue, she felt sadness creep into her heart. Because something told her she would never see Dolly again. Their unlikely friendship had been a summer romance of a different sort. And had, like hers with Box, been irreparably damaged by the actions of another woman. Tragedy may bring people closer together. But once it's over, the only thing anyone wants to do is forget.

 

MacDougal Books & Letters looked different in the light of spring. Laura couldn't put her finger on it at first, then realized, as she stepped out of the cab and walked down the few steps, that the door had been freshly painted in a shiny coat of black.

She pushed it open, heard the familiar tinkle of the gold bell that had welcomed her on so many prior visits.
A lifetime ago
.

Why did she think it would look radically different? It had been a little over six months since her last visit. The shelves were still crammed with books of all shapes and sizes, the schoolhouse pendant lights hung from the ceiling, and the worn wooden counter remained stationed at the left, complete with the old rusty cash register. No one was browsing. Laura knew the shop would be quiet on a Tuesday morning.
Connie must be in the back. He's far too trusting leaving the place unattended like this
.