by Kerri Maher
“You were a good swimmer,” Peggy said jovially. “No one could hold their breath longer than Gracie.”
“Thanks, Peggy,” said Grace, grateful for her sister’s defense, even if it did include a long-standing family barb about her lungs being stronger than her arms. With a lot of practice, Grace reminded herself. No one ever gives me credit for all the hours I put in training my lungs to hold air so long without coughing.
“Daddy,” Peggy said in the playfully reprimanding tone she alone on earth was ever allowed to take with him, “don’t forget that Grace’s own high school yearbook predicted she’d be a star.” Turning to Don, Peggy added, “Don’t mind our father, Don. He’s never appreciated what it takes to be an actor or actress.”
Grace gushed her first real smile of the day at her sister, who had headlined the playbills at several Stevens High School productions.
“I’m sure Grace has told you all about Jack’s brother, George,” Grace’s mother said with a benign smile on her thin lips.
Don nodded appreciatively. “In fact, we met just the other week. Swell guy. You’d never know he won a Pulitzer. So many people in the business get a big head, but George was as humble as can be.”
Grace’s ears burned hot with embarrassment. She should’ve warned Don not to mention their rendezvous with Uncle George!
“So”—her dad looked sternly at Grace—“you introduce Don to your uncle before your father? I see how it is.”
Don looked at Grace with defeated, apologetic eyes. Peggy’s husband, who’d learned long ago to stay quiet at Kelly family events, drained the end of his Bloody Mary and lifted two fingers to signal the waiter for a third.
“Daddy, no,” Grace laughed. “Of course not. It’s just that Uncle George managed to get us all tickets to Annie Get Your Gun,” she lied. It had actually been Streetcar Named Desire, but she didn’t think her father would approve of that one.
Jack Kelly didn’t reply. Yes, the silent treatment had always been his favorite punishment.
“So, Don, what do you do to stay fit for the stage?” Kell entered the fray.
“I like to run,” said Don. “I find it clears my head.”
“I only run to train,” said Kell. “Never understood running for the sake of it. By the end of a few miles, I think I might die of boredom.”
That’s because you have no imagination to entertain you, Kell. “Goodness,” Grace joked, “maybe we’d be better off talking politics.” But only Peggy and George laughed. Don didn’t say anything for the rest of the meal, as John and Kell complained about the “damn Jews and pansies who spread communist filth in the papers,” which caused Grace to blanch with embarrassment and be unable to meet Don’s eye.
Later, alone on a walk through the winding streets of her neighborhood and up the gentle slope from Henry Avenue, Don seethed with fists deep in his pockets and shoulders up to his ears. “Forget their houseguest. Do they realize they’re talking about their own flesh and blood when they say those things?”
“I don’t think they understand much at all about Uncle George,” lamented Grace, who was still so mortified by her father’s comments, she hardly knew what to say except, “I’m very sorry I opened the door to that wretched talk, Don.”
“Stop apologizing for everything, Grace,” he said, echoing one of the lessons she’d absorbed first year at the Academy: Never apologize for a performance, before or after you’ve given it. Never prejudice your audience. Don went on. “It’s not your fault your family’s a bunch of small-minded”—he searched for the right, perhaps most polite, word and settled on—“Irishmen.”
Grace nodded. “It’s true,” she said tensely, feeling the fist on her heart that clenched whenever he disapproved of her lately. “But I hope they don’t affect how you feel about me.”
Don stopped walking and pulled Grace close by her hand. Surrounded by the brick-and-stone facades of the houses in her neighborhood, so many of which had been built by her own family, Grace felt shy about showing too much affection for Don. Luckily, he knew enough not to kiss her on the street. “If anything,” said Don, “they make me admire you more.”
How she wished they were on a bustling New York City street! She’d have kissed him properly, then. As the fist around her heart eased, she contented herself with linking her pinkie finger with his. He leaned over and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.
When they returned to the house, Fordie greeted them at the side gate. His kind face was downturned. “Grace, can I borrow your friend here for a few minutes? I have something to show him, and I think your mother wants to speak to you alone.”
Fear exploded in her throat. Something had happened. Fordie was trying to distract Don, but she couldn’t be fooled.
“Of course,” she said, releasing Don’s hand, and telling him, “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
In the front room, her father was pacing—no, stalking was more like it—and her mother jumped up from the chintz couch and ran at Grace, waving a piece of paper in her hand. “Divorced, Grace? No, not even divorced yet! Still married!”
Grace went numb. She plucked the paper from her mother’s hands and saw that it was indeed from the courts in New York. “Where did you get this?” Grace asked, her voice as thin and trembly as it had been before the Academy.
“Never you mind where I got it,” her mother said, her voice low and grave. “Did you know?”
No acting class could have trained Grace well enough to lie in that moment. Not to her mother and father. “Yes,” she admitted. “But, Mother, they’ve been separated for years. The divorce is just a formality.”
“Maybe to the courts, but not to God,” Margaret spat. Grace had never seen her mother this angry. Nor her father, who’d stopped pacing to glare at her from a few feet away. “And I can’t even mention what else that . . . adulterer had in his bag,” her mother finished.
Grace felt tears flood her eyes. Oh, good Lord, she found the French letters, too—and I told him it was pointless to bring them. I wasn’t going to sleep with him under my parents’ roof! Pressing her lips together, she tried to keep from crying outright.
“You will not be going back to New York,” her mother said, enunciating each word deliberately.
That was too much. “But, Mother, the Academy! I’m about to graduate!” she cried. “And my jobs! I have a whole line of modeling shoots coming up!”
“Peggy will accompany you to New York the few days you have left to complete your remaining rehearsals and performances, but all your nights will be spent here. If your father had his way, you wouldn’t ever return to that den of corruption. As for the modeling, you’ll have to cancel.”
“That little fantasy world you’ve been living in your whole life is too much,” her father added, finally piping up. “Dolls and plays,” he growled, shaking his head. “We indulged you too long. Get your head out of the clouds, Grace. It’s one thing to aspire to the stage, and another to bring the stage home. It ain’t the real world, little girl. If you want to pursue this thing, you’ll have to prove to us you still have a good head on your shoulders and your feet are firmly planted on the ground.”
Grace couldn’t hold it in any longer. As the dam on her sobbing broke, she covered her face and ran to her room, where she lay on her bed and cried so hard, she nearly made herself sick. The house was silent for hours except for the sound of Don—and someone else; she hoped Fordie and not Kell—coming up the stairs, making some hurried, shuffling noises in the guest room. Blood and tears throbbing painfully inside her skull, Grace got up from bed and cracked open her door as quietly as possible so that she could peer down the hall toward the guest room. It was her brother standing on the threshold, arms folded over his chest, watching as Don presumably stuffed his belongings into his bag. Humiliated, for herself and for Don, Grace choked back a fresh sob and silently shut her door, then sank to her bedroom floo
r. It felt as though her heart were actually breaking in two as she heard the men’s footsteps thud down the hall and the stairs and out of the house. She watched as the car started in the garage, backed out of the driveway, then drove its lonely way down Henry Avenue; she wondered if Don was looking up at her; it was too dark for her to see.
The stage might not be the so-called real world, she screamed at her father in her mind as the tears came again, but it’s the only world I want to be in. How could it be otherwise when the world she’d come from had driven her to the theater, and it had taken her into its open arms?
Chapter 4
Darling Grace,” cooed Uncle George, enveloping his niece in a tight and understanding hug, “tell me all about it.”
It was a hot May afternoon, and Grace had been reading Arthur Miller’s All My Sons under the shade of an enormous umbrella beside the club’s glittering blue pool. Uncle George was a welcome sight for her wrung-dry eyes.
“I can’t imagine things being any worse,” said Grace, setting aside the play and curling into a ball with her knees tucked under her chin.
“I can,” said her uncle. If she didn’t love and trust him so much, his amused and vaguely patronizing tone would have sent her around the bend. Instead, she was curious.
“You can’t be serious,” she countered.
George looked up at the umbrella, appearing to gather his thoughts. He was like an oasis in the desert. Though he shared some of his good looks with his brother, Jack, George’s unblemished skin hadn’t been ravaged by years of barking orders to construction workers under the summer sun. His dark hair was just long enough to show its wave, and he kept it combed gently back from his face. In his short-sleeved white linen shirt and pressed chino pants, George Kelly was the epitome of summer elegance.
“Well, for one thing,” he said, “you did graduate from the Academy. With flying colors, I might add.”
“But I couldn’t attend the ceremony,” she pointed out.
“Your curriculum vitae will not say whether you attended the ceremony or not,” he countered. “And no director will ever ask.”
“And no director asked me to audition for his next play, either.”
“Sometimes those invitations don’t come until later,” he said. “And you’re young. You need to pay your dues.”
“I didn’t pay my dues at the Academy?!” Grace whined indignantly, feeling hopeless and put-upon once more.
Uncle George chuckled. “Whoa there. Some of the best actors I know had to take small roles in smaller theaters first. They worked their way up. Adjust your expectations down.”
Grace ground her teeth. Not only was it irritating to know her uncle was right, it was even more irritating to know that her impatience came from her win-at-any-costs father, who was—as she sat there licking her wounds—on the Schuylkill River mercilessly goading Kell toward his second Henley.
“I’d be willing to sweep the damn floor of a theater, Uncle George, if you could just get me out of here.” If she had to go to one more luncheon or garden party with her mother, she was going to go insane.
“As it happens, I might have your ticket out of here,” he said, smirking at the way she lurched forward to grab his arm in anticipation. “Don’t get too excited,” he warned. “I can’t get you back to New York just yet. But I can get you into the Bucks County Playhouse this summer. They’re doing The Torch-Bearers, and since I think you’d make a marvelous Florence McCrickett, I can put in a good word for you. Of course, you’ll have to audition.”
“Oh!” Grace said, grasping her uncle’s arms. “Truly, George? Do you think Mom and Dad will let me?”
George gave her an exaggeratedly reproving look. “Do you honestly think I’d come and taunt you with this suggestion if I hadn’t already spoken to them first?”
At this, Grace flung her arms around her uncle and squealed with delight. “You’re the best!”
“I am, aren’t I?” His voice was airy and devil-may-care, and she wished she knew how he did it.
“When do I go?”
“Now, now, hold your horses. You’ll be commuting from home all summer, and that’s only if you get a part. About an hour and a half each way. It’ll mean a lot of late nights and early mornings. But I couldn’t convince your parents to let you stay with the company.”
For a moment, Grace felt her heart take a plunge, but then, she realized that Fordie would make all that time in the car more than bearable. “I’ll do anything it takes,” she said.
“Excellent,” said George. “You can thank me by getting a good part. I’ve told the director to look for you.”
A week later, Grace celebrated landing the part of Florence McCrickett in both The Torch-Bearers and The Doctor’s Wife, as well as the smaller role of Marian Almond in The Heiress, which meant more to Grace in some ways than the leading parts in her uncle’s plays, because it indicated that the company valued her for more than just her family relationship to a prizewinning playwright. To celebrate, Uncle George took her for champagne, then to the Mask and Wig, Philadelphia’s oldest college musical venue, which her uncle had loved since he snuck into it as a local high school student, and they laughed themselves off their chairs at a troupe performing excerpts from The Mikado. Grace felt expansive, grateful, excited for the first time in ages. She couldn’t wait to see what would come next.
* * *
She worked hard that summer, always tumbling onto the leather seat of her family’s comfortable black sedan sweaty, exhausted, and rapturous from the day’s exertions. As Fordie drove south on the dark highway, their headlights the only illumination for miles, she’d relive the day she’d spent in the gristmill-turned-theater, a big red barn of a building where Helen Hayes and Lillian Gish had starred before her.
“Fordie!” she’d exclaim, her new voice a real voice now; she could modulate it at any volume. “It’s like nothing else. We rehearse lines outside in the morning in the shade. It’s like we’re Puck and Bottom, except of course we’re not. We’re the McCricketts, but that’s what it feels like. Then, in the afternoon, we go inside and work on the stage, and it’s so hot, you wouldn’t believe it. They set fans on us, and they’re either so loud, we can’t hear each other, or too quiet to make anything cooler. But no one cares. It’s all part of the charm of the place. They only turn on the air-conditioning for audiences—it’s part of what they’re paying for,” she laughed.
“Have to keep those customers happy,” Fordie agreed, smiling over at Grace, for she always took the passenger seat beside him those nights. She hated the formality of sitting in the backseat with him driving her around. And he didn’t mind if she didn’t want to talk, and instead closed her eyes while the sultry night air billowed in from the open window and she composed letters to Don in her mind that she never actually wrote but once. Most nights, she was so tired, she fell asleep by the time they reached Henry Avenue, and there wasn’t any time for letter writing during the rehearsal days, and on Sundays her mother made sure she attended church, then showed her off during lunch at the club. Sunday afternoon was her one time to herself, and she usually napped or caught a movie with Lizanne, or met with Uncle George to talk about the plays.
Don sent a few letters, always to the playhouse so her mother couldn’t get her hands on them, and though they were amorous and full of support for her summer endeavors, as well as his hope that they might be reunited in New York soon, he felt very far away. Summer stock was proving more all consuming than any other theater experience she’d had before. The players and set designers, musicians, and everyone involved with the production became her world, and anything and anyone outside Bucks County . . . well, it simply didn’t exist. Those Sunday excursions with her family even felt like visiting another planet, false somehow, not the real world. It didn’t hurt that she’d been carrying on an increasingly less platonic flirtation with Paul Valle, the dead-handsome lead set design
er who was also a painter with his first gallery show in New York coming in the winter.
She arranged for Fordie to see the dress rehearsal for The Doctor’s Wife, because, maddeningly, her parents would never approve of him sitting in the audience for opening night. “So you can see it before they do,” she told him, with a mischievous, shushing finger at her lips, “with Uncle George and William.” When the small, motley audience leapt to their feet in applause, Grace’s heart was beating so fast, she could hardly breathe. Her fingers linked with the other actors’ in relieved solidarity while they raised their arms above their heads, then let them drop. As they bowed, she felt exhilarated and happy in a way that was completely new. In fact, had she ever been happy before? Somehow, all her previous happinesses seemed trivial now. This explosion of heat and energy in her chest was the real thing, what she knew she’d spend the rest of her life in quest of.
With a kiss on the cheek, Fordie gave her a bouquet of pink and blue hydrangea blooms, and said, “You were amazing, Gracie. You’ve got the gift.”
“You did my script proud, Grace,” said Uncle George. “I think this will put you back on the Yellow Brick Road.”
William handed her a large wrapped box, beaming with pride and excitement, and said, “It’s from both of us.” It was her certificate from the Academy in a lovely burnished-gold frame. Tears came to Grace’s eyes as she said, “I can’t wait to hang this in my next New York apartment.”
Later, in a stolen moment after the cast party, Paul kissed her with such hunger, she was tempted to spend the night with him on the mattress that lay unceremoniously on the floor of his studio among his canvases. If it hadn’t been for Fordie waiting to drive her home, she might have done it, since Paul’s firm, strong body was exactly what her own felt it needed to settle its restless energy that night. But Fordie was indeed waiting for her, and she was still in Pennsylvania. Her father’s territory.
