The Girl in White Gloves

by Kerri Maher

  “Peace on earth? Goodwill toward men?” she quipped, dodging the amorousness as skillfully as she had with Hitch and everyone else all those years ago. Little had she known then what good training for wifeliness her years in Hollywood would be. At the time, she’d feared the opposite.

  Rainier smirked, his slim mustache curling up on the right. “I was thinking of something everyone can share. A small public garden for your beloved flowers? Or maybe a statue along the promenade?”

  “Please, Rainier, nothing for me, or of me,” she said, making her voice both alarmed and embarrassed, hoping this conversation would not spiral out of control. “If you must, donate something in my name. A garden might be nice. Or a new wing of the library, a series of plays at the theater that might be free and open to all . . .”

  “So that you can star in them?” he asked jokingly, but the familiar derisiveness was unmistakable.

  She laughed, keeping it amused and fizzy. “I should think not! Who wants to see an old broad like me on the stage?”

  Though the wisecrack she’d made at her own expense gave her a momentary flutter of regret, it calmed quickly when she saw that she had succeeded and the conversation was over. Rainier nodded, then turned to look out the window of the car into the neon-lit night. How she hated those lights—every one of them a blight on the dramatic coastal beauty of her adopted homeland. Thank goodness Rainier had finally seen sense and slowed the building of more such abominations.

  “Don’t forget your glasses,” he said when the car stopped at its destination. The swell of people and cameras readied themselves outside their car. She frequently forgot she was even wearing her glasses, as the pleasure of actually being able to see more than five feet in front of her seemed perfectly natural when she had them on. But Rainier never forgot that she should take them off in public.

  “Thank you, darling” came her automatic reply, as she plucked the tortoiseshell spectacles off her face and set them in the discreet leather box between them. Immediately the world went fuzzy, and when the door was opened for her, she was glad for the usual explosion of flashbulbs so that she had an excuse to squint as she smiled and waited for Rainier’s arm to lead her into the night.

  * * *

  Few things were as soothing to her as the sight of her tidy desk. With the stationery, pens, ink, tissues, clips, and all the other instruments of correspondence neatly stored in small containers within its drawers, the top surface was simply a glossy, inviting expanse of varnished wood. She breathed a sigh of relief at its simplicity.

  As she had no engagements that day, she could sit in her upholstered chair in the luxurious comfort of her softest jeans, bare feet, and cotton cable-knit sweater. She took out a stack of paper and her favorite fountain pen, given to her by her uncle George when she left Henry Avenue for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1947. Like all well-made things, it still worked as well as the day it was given to her twenty-two years ago. “I want you to write and tell me all your adventures,” Uncle George had said. “Even the naughty ones,” he’d added in a low, conspiratorial voice to the dagger-eyed annoyance of her mother. Grace had giggled girlishly at his mischievous remark, hardly able to fathom what sort of naughtiness he might be talking about.

  Imagine. Now she was worried about Caroline getting into the same kind of trouble. And unlike her own mother, who really had little foundation for worry in Grace’s case, Grace had every reason in the world to be concerned about bright, willful Caroline. She didn’t even want to consider what Caroline might be like at seventeen, the age Grace had been when she left home. And the world had changed so much, too—forget the relatively innocent naughtiness of her own youth! Grace shuddered to think what debauchery lay in wait for her oldest child, with the vulture paparazzi always ready to capture it on film.

  Though Grace had many other more pressing matters to attend to, she decided to take a few minutes to write a quick note to Uncle George in California, narrating the latest anecdotes about the children and asking how he had celebrated his own fortieth birthday. He’d always been an inspiration to her—perhaps he could give her a few ideas for her unwanted fête.

  Hours passed in contented, productive silence, and when she started to feel hungry, she wandered into the kitchen she’d insisted on having in their wing of the palace, a kitchen where no servant was allowed unless explicitly invited. She made herself a peanut butter and jam sandwich that she ate standing up, leaning cross-legged against the counter and looking out the large window at the sparkling sapphire blue of the Mediterranean that met the paler blue of the sky at the horizon. At the peripheries of both sides of her vision were the craggy slopes of their piece of the Côte d’Azur, gradual green climbs up and up, with red tile roofs and ancient stonework nestled among the flora. The water was dotted by white yachts of varying sizes, though from her height and distance they all looked roughly the same, except for Aristotle Onassis’s behemoth, the Christina O. At this time of day, the sunshine was bright white and glinted off the water like thousands of tiny, glimmering gems.

  Washing her sweet, sticky lunch down with a glass of cold milk, Grace experienced one of those precious and rare moments of feeling that life was, well, fine. In the last seven years, since she’d said her official goodbye to acting in that wrenching time when she’d had to turn down Hitch’s offer to do Marnie in 1962, she’d built just this life for herself: a daily schedule of correspondence and meetings in the mornings, mostly about the children and her charity work—the hospital, the Red Cross, AMADE, and her flourishing foundation for the arts. She found patronizing dancers and artisans to be satisfying work, even if it did not touch that same part of her soul that acting had. She didn’t admit that last part to many people. To anyone? No, she wouldn’t dare. The last thing she’d want anyone to think was that she was ungrateful.

  And in the afternoons, she tried to be as available to her children as possible. In a few hours, she and four-year-old Stéphie would attend their weekly music class with some other Monégasque mothers and children, after which they would drift to a playground, and then home for dinner with Caroline. Grace enjoyed their simple little dinners together. Noodles and carrots, fish sticks and French fries, tickling and laughing—she liked to indulge in all manner of casual American impropriety when she was with the girls. Pity Caroline was almost too old to enjoy these sorts of silly moments, but Grace planned to cling to them as long as possible.

  She pushed the thought of Albie, in school and its related sports teams for all the daylight hours, out of her mind, as it was too painful to think about. He came home late, utterly exhausted, only to kiss his mother on the cheek and collapse into bed. How much her son would enjoy dinner with his mother and sisters—after all, he was only a boy, just eleven years old! How much she wished he were there.

  Would she also see Rainier in the evening? It was hard to say, and she tried not to dwell on the question and its inevitable and disappointing answer too long.

  Just as she returned to her desk, her private line rang.

  “Hello?” she said, her heart speeding up as it always did in that fragment of a second between her greeting and that of the person on the other end of the line. Who could it be? What escape might the call provide?

  “Gracie? It’s Prudy. How are you?” Her friend’s voice was buoyant, effusive in its long American vowels. She seemed pleased to have reached Grace on the first ring. They had been talking on the phone for nearly twenty years, since the end of their Barbizon days when they’d lived down the hall from each other, and Grace was so grateful for this piece of plastic that allowed them to stay in touch across continents and oceans.

  Grace blew out a gust of air and slouched back in her chair. She, too, was glad to be speaking to an old friend. A small but wonderful escape. “I’m all right, Prudy. Can’t complain, except about turning forty in a few months. Rainier’s after me for a gift and a party.”

  “You
know you sound like a princess, right?” Prudy teased.

  “Oh, I know, and the worst kind, too. Still. This business of getting older is nothing to sneeze at. What did you do for your fortieth?”

  “I took myself to a movie and ate a tub of popcorn in the dark, then went home and drank a bottle of very good red wine.”

  “You mean Arthur didn’t do anything for you?”

  “I told him not to. Careful what you ask for. If I were you, I’d ask for a trip to India. You used to love to travel to exotic places. Or Egypt. See one of the Seven Wonders.”

  The trumpeting whine of an elephant and the windy flap of its ears flashed to Grace’s mind. She’d gone all the way to Africa just to make a movie with Clark Gable and celebrated her twenty-third birthday in the French Congo. “You know, you’re right,” said Grace, feeling something inside her loosen at the suggestion that she could be that girl once again.

  Then it tightened as hard as a rock. Rainier preferred not to travel much farther than the States, and she suspected that going to India by herself would raise far too many eyebrows. But, “I’ll think about it,” she told Prudy, and wondered if her old friend knew she was lying.

  They talked more about what each of them had been up to—Grace was very interested to hear about Prudy’s foray into flower arranging. She was even to have the honor of arranging a large vase of winter branches and berries to be prominently displayed in town hall during the holidays. Grace had always loved flowers, and was learning more about them by working closely with the head gardener to rehabilitate the plantings around the palace.

  “And it’s just terrible about Josephine, isn’t it?” Prudy eventually said.

  For a moment, Grace was confused. “Josephine?”

  “Baker. Remember meeting her at the Copa years ago?”

  “How could I forget? She was treated abhorrently.” Grace felt the grip of injustice in her chest just as she had then, when one of the world’s greatest singers was barred entrance to the snobby club because of the color of her skin. “What’s happened to her recently?”

  “I read in the paper that she’s been evicted from her home in France. Some château or other.”

  “What?” Grace exclaimed indignantly, her hand tightening around the receiver of the phone.

  “She and all her children,” Prudy affirmed.

  Grace opened the lower desk drawer, where she kept her enormous, frayed-fabric address book, which was stuffed to bursting with envelopes and business cards. She was sure she had Josephine’s number in here somewhere. She licked her finger and thumb and began paging through.

  “Gracie? You still there?” came Prudy’s voice in her ear.

  “Yes, yes, I’m here,” she said distractedly. “I’m trying to find Josephine’s number. I have an old one under Baker, and I’m sure that’s not it, but . . .” Aha! “Yes! I found her last Christmas card.” And it had what looked like her most recent phone number. Hopefully the phone hadn’t been disconnected.

  She could hear Prudy laughing on the other end of the line. “That’s the Gracie I know and love,” she said, “not the one who feels bested by a birthday. Go get her, tiger.”

  It took a few days of phone calls to real estate people who spoke such regional French she could barely parse a word, to the gendarmes in the Dordogne, where Josephine’s château was located, and to former neighbors both sympathetic and utterly prejudiced who referred to her as le négro. Grace was infuriated with them, and with herself for allowing Josephine to become a Christmas-card friend. Knowing exactly why she’d let it happen made it more unforgivable, and made her more determined to find and help her old friend. Fearless and iconoclastic, with a decades-long list of stage and musical credits, and France’s highest honor for service during the Second World War, to say nothing of the broken hearts she’d left in her wake, Josephine Baker had long reminded Grace too much of what she was not. She also knew Rainier was skeptical of Josephine, not so much for her risqué performances as for her large family of adopted children from places as far away as Japan and Colombia.

  This had been a mistake, and one that needed to be remedied, Grace realized with a galvanizing determination she felt in her gut and her limbs.

  When at last she got Josephine on the phone, Grace found herself blathering and hoping for forgiveness, almost like she was in a confession box, “Oh, Josephine, I’m so sorry I’ve been out of touch. As soon as I heard what happened to you and your children, I started trying to reach you. How can I help?”

  “Grace! What a surprise! Don’t feel bad! Goodness, don’t you have a country to run?” She laughed, in that smooth, musical voice of hers that remained unaffected and American despite all the years of living abroad. “Tell me all about you and those gorgeous children of yours.”

  Grace raced through her usual highlights—Albie’s intensifying interest in track and field, Caroline’s budding interest in politics, and little Stéphie’s free-spiritedness—then said, “And I want to know more about your own children, so we should look at our calendars and schedule a time to meet. But first, I want to find out where you are living and if you need . . . anything.” It was such a sticky thing. She didn’t want to presume too much, nor to embarrass this legend, her friend. But she couldn’t stand by while the same legend might become homeless, either.

  “You’ve always been very kind, Grace.”

  “I wish I’d been more than kind. I wish I’d been a better friend,” said Grace.

  “Hush, you,” said Josephine. “Now, then. I can’t possibly ask you to put up my entire brood, even if you do live in a palace.”

  “What if I could find you another place? Someplace big enough, and close by, and . . .”

  “Affordable.”

  “We’ll sort that part out later. I’d like to help you in any way I can.” Grace paused, her heart beating loud in her ears and chest. “If you’ll accept it,” she added. “I’d understand if you couldn’t, or didn’t want to.”

  For a few beats, there was silence on the other end of the line, and Grace gripped the receiver, waiting for a reply.

  When it came, Josephine’s voice was quieter, wetter, rockier. “I can’t think of it as charity, Grace. I’ll need to pay you back.”

  “You can pay me back by singing again,” Grace replied, feeling that the full truth—It’s me that needs to make some repairs, Josephine—would only create more discomfort between them. “Have you been singing?”

  “Well . . . I’ve been meaning to get back to it.”

  “That’s wonderful to hear,” said Grace, her body filling with a humming kind of gratitude.

  * * *

  Once she’d gathered enough information, she prepared to approach Rainier. She made a point of serving him a favorite dinner after the children were in bed, and over the roasted chicken, he commented, “You seem happier this week. Have you given any more thought to your birthday?”

  Carefully, she smudged a shine of tarragon sauce from her lower lip, then set the pressed white napkin back in her lap. She had purposely not changed out of the bouclé suit she’d worn to the Red Cross earlier in the day, to remind her husband of the good she did every day in Monaco, in his name. “I hope I seem happier when I’m working for others.” She smiled, then took a deep breath.

  “You remember Josephine Baker?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he said. “I have always enjoyed her songs, and she was very important in the war. You two used to be friends, did you not?” He smiled at her, and in his smile, she glimpsed what was best in him—the charity in his heart, his desire to be part of positive changes in Monaco, the father who wanted all that was best for his children.

  “Yes, we were, and I feel bad that I let the friendship slip until recently,” said Grace. He seemed to be in an open mood. Now was as good a time as any to make her request. “I discovered the other day that she needs some help. Yo
u see, it seems she and her children have lost their home in the Dordogne.”

  Rainier frowned. “Her Rainbow Tribe?”

  “You don’t have to say it like that.” Here it comes. Stay calm.

  “She has twelve children of different nationalities. She had to sell tickets to her château and show off her tribe like zoo animals just to make ends meet.”

  “She hardly treats her children like animals, Rainier. And anyway, how can you say that as if your own zoo animals aren’t the most important things in the world to you?” Careful, Grace, she warned herself. He knows you don’t love the palace zoo as he does, and you don’t want to put him on the defensive. “Anyway,” she went on, shaking her head and pushing out all thoughts of zoos, “Josephine wanted to make a point, a profound point if you ask me, that people of any color and background can live together happily. And she sold tickets to see the gardens.”

  “You can believe that if you like, darling, but it will be a belief, not a truth.”

  Oh, he can be so arrogant and patronizing! She told herself not to lose her temper. “You’re always saying,” she went on carefully, “that you want all the people of Monaco to live peacefully and prosperously, not just those who make a great deal of money. It’s a mission I share.”

  “And you want to help Josephine Baker.” His face was so hard to read. It was a mix of disdain for Josephine’s maternal choices, but also pause and consideration of Grace’s points.

  “Yes,” she said, at last playing her trump card. “It would be the most wonderful birthday present you could give me. A home for my friend near Monaco, ensuring that a French and American national treasure is preserved.”

  She’d hit the right note—she could see it in the way he sat back in his chair, his right index finger pressing on his lips, his gaze fuzzy as he thought.