Searching for Grace Kelly (7 page)

“Why? Why do you think? We need to walk in all together, a nice group of girls returning from Sunday services.”

Laura stopped dead on the sidewalk. “You can't be serious,” she said. “I know you think you have this down to an art form, but you can't honestly believe any of those women at the front desk are going to believe you went to church this morning dressed like that.”

Vivian yanked her back into a brisk pace. “Still in mourning for my grandmother, for whom I dress in black every Sunday as a testament to my grief. At least that's what I tell them.”

“And they believe you?”

“They're bitter old women who live their lives through dime-store romance novels,” Vivian said as they caught up to the others, just as Oscar, the portly doorman, opened the entrance to the Barbizon. “You'd be amazed at what they believe.”

The conservatory of the Barbizon was half full, good attendance for a summer Sunday. A girl with brittle shoulder-length hair fidgeted nervously at the front, occasionally dashing over to the pianist and flipping through pages, pointing to a particular chord or a key change she was mulling over. Every few seconds she looked anxiously to the door, willing more girls into the room.

Laura scanned the conservatory and spotted Dolly in the second row, her arm moving in a slightly frantic windshield-wiper wave.

“C'mon,” Laura said to Vivian, dawdling behind her.

“Must we sit in the queen's box?” Vivian asked as they sank down in two seats next to Dolly. Vivian was still wearing her enormous pair of dark oval sunglasses. “We're not
playing
this concert, are we?”

“You don't have to stay,” Dolly said, shooting Laura a sideways glare. “This is really important to Ruth, and I want to show my support. And why are you wearing those absurd sunglasses?”

“Sometimes a girl needs her privacy,” Vivian replied. “Only Elizabeth Taylor could understand.”

Dolly looked back to Laura between them. “Is she for real?”

“It appears so,” Laura said.

“Believe me,” Vivian said, “I'd rather not be here, either.”

“Then why are you?” Dolly asked.

Vivian delivered her own sideways glance to Laura. “Blackmail.”

Laura watched two more girls wander in, laughing. They took seats in the last row, where they began a spirited if hushed conversation that no doubt centered on some scoundrel they'd seen downstairs in the coffee shop. She thought of Box Barnes and his robust bouquet of roses, now stuffed into two Mason jars sitting on her night table.

Dolly seemed to be reading her thoughts. She'd been obsessing about the flowers since the moment Laura had brought them upstairs, reading and rereading Box's note as if deciphering the Rosetta stone. “Did Laura tell you she got flowers from Box Barnes?” she asked Vivian. “And not just any flowers: red roses.”

Vivian slid her glasses down slightly. “Do tell.”

“They came yesterday,” Dolly gushed. “We went down to the Village because Laura wanted to see some old bookstore, and I ditched, but then when she got home later”—she turned briefly to Laura—“Where were you all day, anyway?”—“well, she comes in and is carrying this
big
box of beautiful long-stem roses and a card that says he sent roses to every girl named Laura in the Barbizon because he didn't know her last name, and he wanted to apologize.”

Vivian was clearly curious, which excited Dolly. “My, my, such high drama, Xtabay,” she said, glancing admiringly at Laura. “Continue.”

“Well, we met—well, we didn't really meet him, we just saw him, well, really, Laura was the one who saw him, I mean, they made eye contact, in the coffee shop. Anyway, when we were at the Stork on Friday night, he ran right into Laura when she was coming out of the ladies' lounge, and he put the moves on her—”

“Dolly!” Laura interjected in an urgent whisper. “Please! He did not ‘put the moves' on me. We had a brief unpleasant chat. That's all.”

Dolly waved her off. “It had to be more than that, though of course she won't tell me any of the details. But a man like that does not send roses and an apology unless he really screwed up.”

“This is fun,” Laura said. “It's like I'm not here.”

Vivian shook her head. “It's always the New England girls.”

Laura cocked an eye. “Pardon?”

“Everyone thinks it's the southern girls or—pardon—the British girls who are the natural Venus flytraps for men. But in my experience, which is not inconsiderable, it's those steely New England roses who always manage to snag the most eligible men. There's something to be said for being slightly aloof and forbidden.”

“I am neither aloof nor forbidden.”

“No, darling. You're Grace Kelly.”

“Oh my God, I
loooooove
her!” Dolly squealed. “Is it really true she lived here?”

“Yes,” Vivian said. “In the late forties. While she was studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.”

“Did you
know
her? And will you please take off those ridiculous glasses? It's like talking to Mata Hari!”

Vivian again lowered the glasses. “Crikey, Dolly! How old do you think I am? I'm not one of the Women. I've only lived here a few months.”

“Grace Kelly is not a New Englander,” Laura interrupted.

“But she has that sort of New England breeding and reserve,” Vivian argued. “It's like she's made of steel, yet the most lovely, beautiful steel ever crafted. There's something always lingering just beneath the surface when you look at her—a sense of mystery and sex, of all the weapons one can use to be a truly compelling woman.”

“I don't associate Grace Kelly with sex,” Dolly said. “She's just . . . gorgeous. And elegant. A lady. I will never forget that scene in
Rear Window
when she walks into Jimmy Stewart's apartment wearing that fantastic green skirt suit.”

“I love the scene where she comes in and finds Jimmy Stewart sleeping,” Laura said, “and the camera gets closer and closer, and her face gets bigger, and bigger, and it's almost like she's coming in to kiss the camera—”

“Ethereal,” Vivian agreed.

“It's
romantic
,” Dolly said with a sigh. “But it's not about sex.”

“Well, it certainly was when she was living
here
.”

Both Laura's and Dolly's eyes widened. “What do you mean?” Laura asked.

They were disrupted by Ruth at the front of the room, still fidgeting, but now clearing her throat and asking for everyone's attention. She thanked them all for coming to this afternoon recital of selections from Rodgers and Hammerstein, announcing that for her first number she would be singing “Hello, Young Lovers” from
The King and I
.

“Fitting,” Vivian said, patting Laura on the knee. “Perhaps she can dedicate it to you and Box.”

“Stop it.”

“Hold it!” Dolly whispered urgently. “You can't leave us hanging like that! What about Grace?”

“Oh, Grace, Grace, Grace.” Vivian sighed, theatrically putting her sunglasses back on. “Still the face of the Barbizon, six years later. Well, from what I've heard she was more Marilyn Monroe than Grace Kelly back then. She had many gentlemen calling, and she knew where to hide them.”

Dolly looked positively stunned. “No!”

“Oh, yes. There is a very often-told legend that one night she actually came out of her room and did the Dance of the Seven Veils
in the hallway
. I wish I could have seen Metzger's face for that. She was far more, shall we say, ‘high-spirited' than the movie magazines would have you believe.”

“She was engaged to Oleg Cassini, which I do
not
understand,” Dolly said. “He's awful!”

“He's rich, darling,” Vivian said. “You'll come to appreciate that.”

“And this is who you're comparing me to,” Laura said, “a girl who snuck men all around the Barbizon and did the Dance of the Seven Veils and then hid it all behind some veneer of cold respectability? This is how you see me?”

“What I see,” Vivian said, “is a girl very much like Grace Kelly in all the ways that count: beautiful, clever, and who doesn't show all of her cards. And who I suspect is far more adroit at keeping men off balance than she cares to admit.”

As Ruth began to warble the opening verse, Laura folded her arms, trying to concentrate on the music even as her mind flooded with conflicting images: feature stories from
Mademoiselle
, Box Barnes smiling at her in the coffee shop, Box Barnes demeaning her at the Stork, the dust particles flitting against the dirty windows inside Connie's bookstore in the Village, Pete the bartender's cocky smile, the roses sitting upstairs, demanding an answer.

She wondered if Grace Kelly had ever sat in this very room listening to another girl sing, and if her head had been similarly cluttered, wondering which door to choose, which road to go down. Which life would ultimately be her own.

 

Laura thought she would be more nervous, but perhaps being disorganized was actually helping. It would be enough just to accessorize the right shoes and belt. She wouldn't have time to worry about what came afterward.

She had fought for sleep and lost. After the recital she and Dolly had gone down to the coffee shop for dinner, making sure to stop on the way out to tell Ruth what a lovely performance she'd given. It hadn't been true, of course—Ruth had sounded like a maiden aunt summoning the courage to sing at the family reunion after one too many brandies Alexander—but the Barbizon was about nothing if not civility.

Dolly had gone to the TV room to watch Milton Berle as Laura went upstairs and took a long bath, then returned to the room to rummage through her curated wardrobe and find the appropriate outfit for her first day at
Mademoiselle
, a maddening exercise that had her second-guessing everything she'd brought and doing something that a week ago would have seemed impossible: looking forward to Marmy's visit. At least it would result in something new to wear.

Dolly returned and sank into a deep and blissful sleep seemingly within minutes. Laura lay awake for hours, unable to shut down the traffic inside her head. She had considered writing Box a thank-you note but decided against it. He didn't deserve a response. A bouquet of flowers and some witty lines jotted down, all no doubt executed by some family servant, weren't enough to mitigate his behavior at the Stork.

Her thoughts had then settled on an unlikely subject: Vivian. Here was a girl she certainly had no faculty to understand and yet fascinated her. Some of it was her sheer exoticism—the red hair, the tweedy accent—but there was an intangible quality to Vivian, a whimsy that came easily to her that would appear odd and affected on someone else. Her carefree attitude and dramatic bearing were elixirs, perfumes that made you notice her when she walked into a room. There was a certain power, a seductiveness, to that, one that Laura hated herself for wanting. She had come to New York to forge a career as a writer, to be admired for her words, her intellect, and yet here she was, staring up at the ceiling at two in the morning, fantasizing about what it was like to be the vamp.

Her memory had drifted back to her coming-out party at the country club, which she'd begged Marmy to let her out of. There had been a part of her that was secretly happy she'd lost the argument, the part that had stood for the fitting in the tight-bodiced ball gown with the flowing skirt, the part that had mastered the rhythmic sway of the waltz. But standing upstairs on the landing with the other girls waiting to be announced and descend like swans down the winding staircase, she had felt like a fraud. She listened to the other girls' talk of the vacant boys who would serve as their escorts, about the extravagant gifts they'd extracted from their mothers for enduring this charade.

There had been one girl who had stood apart from the others. Laura had seen her at a few of the rehearsals but had never spoken to her. Tall and clumsy and swathed in filmy white, she seemed to stand out even more. Her long neck hooked back into her head like a question mark, and her thin, bony arms seemed too frail for her opera gloves. Struck by the girl's obvious discomfort, Laura had walked over to her.

“Hi. I'm Laura.”

It seemed to take the girl a few seconds to realize someone was speaking to her. “Oh, hi.”

“It's all a bit much, isn't it?”

“Yes.” The girl had looked at Laura intently. “You're very pretty.”

“Thanks. So are you.”

“No, I'm not,” the girl replied matter-of-factly. “But it's nice of you to say.” She hitched up her skirt. “I feel like Mother Goose in this thing.” She walked away.

A few minutes later the nine girls descended the staircase in order, each announced to a ballroom packed with their families and their families' business acquaintances, distant relatives, and glommers-on. Halfway through the evening, Laura had sought out the odd girl but couldn't find her anywhere. Stepping out onto the veranda of the club, she'd caught the tail end of a discussion between the girl and her mother, a formidable-looking matron in the Marmy mold clutching a small beaded handbag in her gloved left hand and pointing accusatorily at the girl with her right. The mother was alternately pointing at the girl and then shaking her head. Laura slowly walked toward them.

“I just don't feel comfortable making all of this small talk,” the girl pleaded. “I'm trying—”

“You're
not
trying, Mariclaire, and I for one—”

“Laura!” Mariclaire had caught her eye. “Getting some fresh air?”

Mariclaire's mother turned around, her face softening in an instant as they were introduced. “Of course, the Dixons' girl,” she'd said. “How lovely you look, my dear.”