The Girl in White Gloves

by Kerri Maher

  Chapter 11

  The first thing Grace did on their “ladies’ weekend” in Paris was take Caroline and Stéphie to see a movie. “But we must go incognito!” she announced. To her daughters’ amusement, Grace opened a chest full of old sweaters, skirts, and trousers from the days before her every move outside her residence was photographed. Her friends had always teased her for her pack-rat tendencies, and also her formerly frumpy taste in clothes.

  “We’ll be retro girls today,” said Grace. Despite the eight-year age difference between them—seventeen and nine—both Caroline and Stéphie appeared equally tickled by their mother’s determined game, and threw themselves into it with the same gusto they’d had playing dress-up as little children. Grace tied a scarf that smelled faintly of old perfume around her head and knotted it under her chin, then put on a thin wool-felt coat she remembered buying at Saks shortly after she graduated from the Academy. The faded scent and the light weight of the coat flooded Grace with memories—Don’s kisses, Carnegie Hall on damp New York mornings, and steaming coffee from Chock Full o’Nuts. Shaking her head, she tried to clear her mind and be present in this moment with her girls.

  “Well?” she asked her daughters, twirling in the hopes of getting their approval.

  “Mom, wear these,” said Stéphanie, sliding a pair of her own pink plastic sunglasses onto Grace’s face.

  “Perfect!” squealed Caroline, who looked more like herself than ever, scrubbed of all makeup with her dark hair scraped back into a ponytail. Grace’s two daughters looked gorgeous, but totally unlike their usual overdone selves. Caroline had on a cashmere sweater in cotton candy pink, a polo shirt’s collar popped up from underneath. With some of Grace’s round sunglasses, she was the picture of preppy American clean; Grace would never say so, but her daughter looked a bit like a tourist, a California girl in the City of Light. Stéphie chose a jaunty beret and a black skirt, then her sister’s denim jacket, which was too large for her preadolescent frame but served to disguise her well.

  “All right, phase one of Operation Great Gatsby is complete,” said Grace.

  Next, they giggled in the elevator as Stéphie babbled excitedly to the attendant, Monsieur Dubois, what they were up to.

  “Bonne chance,” he said with a tip of his hat as they exited the lift and turned their backs on the marble lobby and the two paparazzi stationed just outside the door—there always seemed to be a pair standing sentry—to wend their way through the service hallways and out the back entrance. They emerged onto the wide sidewalk in the crisp spring air, and Stéphie and Caroline high-fived each other, then Grace. Her heart swelled in her chest. She loved it when she managed to choreograph something like this. They were rare, these moments when all three princesses of Monaco could unite around a single fun project. Grace wanted to savor every second. Offering a hand to each daughter, she was amazed when they laced their fingers through hers, and she felt tears rush to her eyes. Don’t be silly, she told herself, swallowing back the rising emotion.

  We’re off to see the Wizard . . . , whistled Stéphie.

  They managed to get all the way into their red velvet seats in the center of the movie theater, with a bag of candy each. Only then did Grace remove the scarf around her head and say, “We did it!”

  “Can we do it again tomorrow?” asked Stéphanie, regret that their adventure was already partly over creeping into her voice. Grace understood the feeling, but was determined to wring every moment of happiness out of this glorious afternoon.

  “Maybe,” replied Grace. “But let’s not worry about tomorrow. Let’s enjoy today.”

  And they did. Robert Redford and Mia Farrow were marvelous as Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan. Caroline had recently read Fitzgerald’s novel for an American literature class at St. Mary’s, and even though much of what the characters were living through went right over Stéphie’s head, Grace could tell her younger daughter was drinking in the well-staged spectacle of Prohibition-era parties and costumes.

  “That was so good,” Stéphie breathed as the credits rolled.

  “It was a really great adaptation of the book,” agreed Caroline judiciously.

  “Yes, it’s a much better production than the one that came out when I was your age,” said Grace, remembering Alan Ladd and Betty Field in the main roles. She recalled feeling that picture was serviceable, but not more. Who’d she seen it with? Don? Maree? Prudy? It seemed impossible she couldn’t remember. She’d never forget seeing this one with her girls.

  As soon as the time came to discuss school with Caroline, the spell was broken. She waited until the following afternoon to bring it up, and proceeded with the utmost caution.

  “Wouldn’t it be fun,” Grace began, “if the three of us could have more adventures like yesterday?”

  Caroline didn’t answer right away. They were sitting in the living room with the rosy combination of antiques and comfortable, deep sofas. Caroline was lying on one of those now, one foot up and the other flat on the Persian rug on the floor. Flipping through Marie Claire, she didn’t look at Grace as she spoke.

  “Mom, you know as well as I do that yesterday was an exception and not the rule.”

  Undeterred, Grace said, “I don’t see why that has to be the case.”

  “I know what this is about. You want to live here when I go to the lycée in the fall. But I’m seventeen, the same age you were when you left for New York.”

  “When I left for New York, I was nobody,” Grace said. “There weren’t photographers outside the Barbizon waiting for me to make a mistake.”

  “Lucky you.” Flip, flip. Her daughter couldn’t be reading anything so quickly. Was she even seeing the pictures?

  “I was lucky. It’s true. I feel terrible that this is your life, Caroline. I really do. Let me help make it up to you by protecting you.”

  “I don’t need protection, Mom.”

  Oh, but you do. “I did at your age.” Grace hoped reframing the discussion to make it about her would help. “My parents used to send Peggy or Lizanne to chaperone me all the time, and I liked it.” This was partially true, at least. She had liked the sisterly company. She had not liked the parental insistence that she needed help, which made it all the harder to try to take this position with her daughter now. She understood what it felt like to want freedom and feel perfectly capable of living freely. The problem was, her parents had continued to baby her even after she’d proved she could live independently—earning her own wages and paying for her rent, clothes, and everything else. She didn’t intend to make that mistake with her girls, but Caroline was nowhere near independent yet.

  When she looked at Caroline, Grace saw a little girl. Someone who still slouched at the table, simpered to get her way, and spent too much money on the Champs-Élysées. Perhaps it was her fault that Caroline had become that way, with money at least—heaven only knew, she hadn’t been as frugal a parent as Margaret or John Kelly, since shopping was one of the few ways she had of accessing her daughter’s softer side. But the point was, she couldn’t see Caroline living alone as she’d done at her age.

  Oh, how she wished for a situation like the one at the Barbizon, complete with firm regulations about gentleman callers and curfews. At St. Mary’s, the nuns and strict teachers were the perfect scapegoats. Cowardly as she knew it was to hide behind their rules, Grace had been grateful for them. When she’d suggested to Rainier that they find a similar boarding situation to the Barbizon in Paris, he’d scoffed, “Caroline’s not some middle-class girl getting a secretarial degree, Grace.”

  “Neither was I,” Grace had snapped back. That had been a particularly nasty fight, and all the togetherness of the Silver Jubilee was forgotten.

  “I’ve warned you again and again,” he’d said, “and you’ve never taken any of my advice. If she goes off the rails, you’ll have only yourself to blame. You must do what I’ve done with Albert. Be firm and
consistent, and all will be well.”

  Grace had felt anger explode, hot and mutinous, in her chest. “Thank you, Dr. Spock,” she couldn’t help saying.

  “You always do this,” said Rainier, his tone becoming clipped and irascible. “You’re never able to take criticism of any kind, and then you shoot down anyone who has an opinion different from yours.”

  She’d nearly rolled her eyes. She’d taken instructions and criticism her whole life, from acting teachers, directors, even her costars, and she enjoyed feedback, when it was helpful. What she didn’t like was when her husband, who was supposed to be her partner, her equal, treated her as something . . . less. But of course to him, she was less. She hadn’t been born a princess or even a duchess or a countess. She was a bricklayer’s daughter from Philadelphia.

  Think about that later, Grace told herself. Your daughter’s in front of you now.

  “I’m ready, Mom,” said Caroline, dropping the magazine on the floor and sitting up. She leaned forward, elbows on knees, and said, “Dad thinks I’m old enough. He has faith in me.”

  Grace’s breath caught in her throat. It would be just like Rainier to comfort Caroline by saying how much he loved and believed in her, always the first-person singular. It had taken Grace too long to realize the difference, and the profound effect of one little pronoun. J’adore, je te fais confiance, not nous adorons, on te fais confiance. As if he were the only one who loved his children. Grace always tried to present a united front. We, us, our. Grace was furious that he had delegated this uncomfortable conversation to her because “It’s what you want.”

  “Your father and I have discussed this at some length, and we agree that you should not live completely on your own,” Grace said to Caroline in measured tones, because that much was entirely true. He didn’t want Caroline to live alone. “The question is whom you will live with. Me and Stéphie, here in this house, or in . . . another arrangement.” And therein was the problem. What arrangement? Rainier had suggested Caroline live with their friends the Corvettos, who had a lovely home very close to the lycée.

  Grace suspected the reason he didn’t like the idea of his wife and daughters living together in Paris had more to do with her than with Caroline. “How will this look?” he’d asked Grace. “My wife deserting her subjects and her husband for Paris?” Grace had assured him that she and the girls would return to the palace every weekend. He said he’d think about it, and Grace couldn’t quite believe she was waiting for her husband’s permission to do something. It brought back so many claustrophobic feelings from her youth, all the many times she’d needed permission to do something important to her, like work at the Chatterbox in Ocean City, study at the Academy, go back to New York after Don. Even after her parents didn’t need to give permission, there had been MGM to contend with. Had she ever not needed permission to do as she liked?

  The question stunned her.

  “No more convents,” pleaded her daughter.

  “No,” Grace agreed with a nod. She heard her own desperation in her daughter’s voice, and felt a momentary pang of jealousy that teenage Caroline was allowed to express her vexation this way while an adult woman like Grace was not.

  “You seem to have enjoyed St. Mary’s, convent though it was,” she ventured with an encouraging smile. “You made good friends there, and you’ve become a marvelous horsewoman. And who’d have thought that London would have made you such a fashion plate!” She hoped that by invoking the lighthearted London–Paris sartorial rivalry between them, Grace would lighten the mood.

  Caroline did smile, wistfully, as if she was looking back on events from years ago, not merely months. “Please, Mom, I just want to feel free.”

  Grace crossed the short distance between their two couches to sit next to her daughter, and put her hand on Caroline’s. “I know you do, darling. I know that feeling perfectly. I promise to help.” She just needed to figure out a way to help that would limit Rainier’s hostility and bring her closer to her daughter. No small challenge. But she felt equal to it, and ready for more. It was spring, after all, and once upon a time, good things had happened to her in the spring.

  Chapter 12

  1952

  Did you really just order our meal in Swahili?” Clark Gable asked. Grace blushed and giggled. He sounded exactly like he did in the movies, with that pat-on-the-back attitude in the slightly nasal tone. Not many men could speak like that and still be sexy. But this was Clark Gable: dark hair, tan face, trim mustache, and all. And his shoulders were huge, Grace was pleased to note. Quite a specimen, even though he was old enough to be her father.

  “I had quite a lot of time to study on the plane,” she said, smoothing the napkin in her lap.

  “Grace is a master of impressions, so it’s not at all surprising to me that she’s a natural with languages, too,” added Ava Gardner, whom Grace had met once or twice at parties in Hollywood. It was good to see her again, and in such fine humor with her husband, Frank Sinatra, along. “Couldn’t pass up a chance to see Africa on a boondoggle,” Frank told Clark when the older actor had greeted him with surprise in the lobby of their hotel.

  “This I have to see,” said Clark, now fastening his famous eyes right on Grace. Mortified, she blushed again and looked down at her napkin. Was she really here, in Africa, shooting a John Ford movie with Clark Gable and having dinner with Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra?

  “Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head and looking down at her plate as her cheeks burned. “I need much more wine before I can attempt that.”

  “Well, fill her glass, then, fellas!” Clark said, grabbing the neck of the bottle on the table and filling her mostly full goblet to the brim.

  “Mr. Gable, back home we have a name for men like you who try to get the ladies drunk,” Grace said with a coy reprimand in her most ladylike lilt.

  “My dear, you can call me anything you like if you do an impression of Gary Cooper for me tonight.”

  Grace swallowed. “We’ll see,” she said.

  Frank raised his bottle of beer and said, “Nice work, Clark.”

  The evening proceeded at the same joyful pace under the most starlit night sky Grace had ever seen—zillions of little white twinkles competed for space in the blackness above. Their party reclined in woven cane chairs on the patio, enjoying the sultry November night. It was impossible to believe snow flurries had been falling in New York when she left, and here she was sitting in a linen dress. Harder to believe she’d be twenty-three in a few days. In some ways, she felt like a girl—eager for Clark Gable’s approval and yet nervous about getting it or, worse, not getting it—and in other ways she felt ancient, as if she’d like nothing better than to take her leave and get a good night’s sleep in preparation for the challenges ahead. She knew it was essential for her to play the former and not the latter, so she drank just enough wine to feel loose and hid her yawns behind her fingers.

  Before dessert’s end, she rose to Clark’s challenge, doing an almost silent spoof of Gary Cooper’s Marshal Cane that had everyone in stitches.

  “Yes!” exclaimed Frank, as he clapped appreciatively. “I thought he looked exactly like that.”

  “Constipated?” laughed Ava.

  “You said it, not me, sweetie.” And he kissed his wife hungrily on the mouth.

  The immediate repartee of the cast made for a great environment on the set. Though most scenes required many takes, as John Ford was as much a perfectionist as Zinnemann, no one minded, since it was so much fun to chat in the shade of the Meru oak trees, or visit the animals and learn about elephants and monkeys and even a lion cub from the skinny men who tended them. Their skin was so black, Grace reflected, Fordie and Josephine’s complexions seemed closer to her own than to theirs.

  Though a few of their equally dark countrymen were employed to help John Ford on the set, Grace felt uncomfortable with the way they were treated—when
one of the men who always showed up in a freshly pressed white shirt and khakis asked one of the cameramen a question, Grace noted that the cameraman brushed him off, saying, “If I have time, I’ll show you later.” Grace doubted later would ever show up.

  All the fine restaurants where they ate were populated entirely by white foreigners like her and serviced entirely by black locals, who silently filled water glasses, cleared plates, and fetched coats. She wondered what Josephine might have to say about Africa.

  Grace liked it best when the cast stayed the night in hotels, as the beds and room temperatures were far more comfortable than those of the so-called luxury cabins in which they slept down the river. At least the huts had the benefit of putting Grace and her fellow cast members in more authentic frames of mind to play characters who were out of their element in the wilds of Africa—except for Clark, of course, who frequently played men who could rough it with the best of them, then clean up nicer than the tidy intellectual who had no hope of winning the girl.

  Grace wondered if she’d ever get to play a part like the one Ava was playing—sultry and wisecracking, just wanton enough in her capris and blouses unbuttoned just so, her short hair revealing the kind of neck any man would want to kiss down to the collarbone. Only on Broadway could she pull it off, Grace suspected, where typecasting wasn’t as prevalent and actors could even break out of time-worn ruts. Her breasts weren’t big enough to play that kind of role on celluloid, even if she could drop her voice to sound like she smoked a pack a day. That’s just not you, Gracie. Stop being silly. There seemed to be a chorus of people telling her that in her head.

  Mogambo’s good times—days of productive work and nights of food, drink, jokes, cards, and charades—lasted through her birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, with the additional treat of Ava’s birthday on Christmas Eve. Around New Year’s, though, the novelty had started to wear off. The truth was, the script was only so-so, and everyone had grown weary and started pining for the comforts of their American homes. Grace herself had started to dream about hot baths in her claw-foot tub. They all wondered if Ford’s direction and Gable’s star power would be able to carry the film, aided in some small way by the rest of their contributions.