The Girl in White Gloves

by Kerri Maher

  And then Grace also had the sense that she was falling in love with Oleg. She saw him during the holidays on a week she spent on the East Coast seeing family and checking on things in New York. After dinner they went dancing, and Oleg held her tightly, murmuring in her ear, “When will I have you to myself, ma chérie? I am pining for you.” For the first time in she didn’t know how long, she felt a long velvet ribbon of romance unwinding slowly between herself and a man, and she loved that Oleg was not also an actor. He was a professional artist in his own right, and so he understood that ambitious, creative side of her, but the fact that he was not part of her industry made a relationship with him more appealing and also more promising.

  That promise told Grace to wait before giving herself to Oleg, however. She didn’t want to jeopardize the stride she’d hit in Rear Window with what promised to be a passionate entanglement with the fashion designer. By the same token, she didn’t want to jeopardize a possible future with Oleg by being distracted by Rear Window. She found him so attractive, reveled in his intellect and his wit—she found herself thinking of him in nearly all her private moments, of all the conversations and kissing she wanted to experience with him. Wait, she told herself as her body began to buzz with desire. Wait. Do things differently this time, and maybe they will proceed differently. End differently.

  Maybe they won’t end at all.

  She tried to focus instead on caring for herself, organizing her life so that when the time came to be fully distracted by Oleg, she wouldn’t get as derailed as she had in the past. The Los Angeles apartment was a good first step, as was throwing herself into her second movie with her favorite auteur. She also hired a man to manage her money in New York, and drew up a budget that allowed for a possibly larger, finer place in Manhattan as well. After spending the afternoon at a bookstore in Los Feliz, she brought home a few books of poetry she’d found herself entranced by, as well as the latest editions of the Betty Crocker Cookbook and The Joy of Cooking. The following morning, she whipped up a batch of blueberry muffins for herself and Rita.

  “Jesus, Grace, these are amazing,” Rita said as she reached for another fluffy, sweet muffin.

  “They are good, aren’t they? Mother never made these kinds of things for breakfast,” Grace said, deciding to enjoy a third muffin herself with another cup of coffee. “I think I had oatmeal every morning of my childhood. Except at Christmas.” The idea that she could care for herself like this—without a corner bakery or someone else to run the errand—was something of a revelation.

  * * *

  Hitch wrapped shooting in January of 1954, and Grace couldn’t wait to see the finished product. She had the sense that something very special had happened in the making of that movie—not because of parties or drunken camaraderie, but because everyone working on the picture regarded it as a job they were determined to do well, with all the skills they possessed. The whole experience had erased the regret she’d felt in not taking the part of Edie Doyle in On the Waterfront. Even more, Rear Window began to soften the hard edges of her resentment about Broadway. In the company of Hitch and Jim and Edith, Grace felt seen and appreciated in ways she never had on the stage, even in her early days at the Academy when Don couldn’t say enough good things to her.

  In a few precious moments of unadulterated optimism, Grace thought that Rear Window might be a work that would actually last. Much as she loved theater, Grace knew that great movies enjoyed long lives in a way that plays could not, even plays with very long runs. True, a picture could get remade, like Red Dust redone as Mogambo, but others were never made again because their magic could never be replicated: The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Gaslight. Instead, those pictures were shown again and again all over the world, and thus the actors who were in them enjoyed the longest careers of any in the business.

  Perhaps Rear Window would be one of those. Only time would tell.

  In the meantime, Jay told her she had to do one small part for a Paramount picture MGM actually wanted her to do before returning to New York, and she agreed without a fuss because The Bridges at Toko-Ri offered her a rare opportunity to make MGM happy with a small, easily managed role that would also give her top billing right beneath household name William Holden. A war movie made for the veterans who wanted to relive their World War II or Korean War glory, it was no Rear Window, but Grace tried to see it as fulfilling some sort of patriotic duty. And as a nice bonus, it made her father happy. “At least that’s a movie I can see and understand, instead of that artsy nonsense you’ve been doing with that pansy Hitchcock,” he’d said when she rung her parents to tell them of the new role.

  His comment stirred the rebellious girl inside her, the one who’d packed her life into suitcases to move to New York at seventeen. As she slammed down the phone’s receiver, she thought, What do you know about art, you intolerant philistine? But a few days later, the fury wore off, and her nerves started jangling in that familiar way, making her feel restless and disoriented, unable to just look on the bright side as she so much wanted to do.

  Returning to New York that winter was a welcome distraction, especially with the promise of a consuming romance with Oleg Cassini, with whom that rebellious girl inside her had decided to fall fully in love—likely parental disapproval of his divorces and Russian heritage be damned.

  It began swimmingly, with a few nights of dinners and dancing, and then the clincher: the most unexpected and unusual date she’d ever gone on. After instructing her to wear blue jeans, not an evening dress, Oleg whisked her into a cab “for a true surprise,” which turned out to be a dive bar in Brooklyn where they ordered beer and watched a wiry young man with black hair named Lenny Bruce take the microphone on a small stage, and do a comedy routine that had the entire place gasping for air and clutching their sides. She hadn’t had this much pure fun in an audience since she was a little girl and Uncle George would take her to puppet shows and other small theater productions around Philadelphia—just the two of them, escaping the disapproving eyes of her athletic parents.

  “How did you know about him?” Grace asked Oleg, her eyes wide with surprise and admiration that this sophisticated man who knew everything about French wine and Coco Chanel could also know about underground comedy in the outer boroughs.

  “I like to talk to the people who work for me, the men and women who cut the fabric and sew the seams. They have told me about some of the very best food and entertainment in the city. And look! No photographers.” He gestured around the smoky bar, likely a former speakeasy, now a standing-room-only crowd of bohemians who didn’t give a fig about Madison Avenue.

  Not one of them was looking at her or Oleg, let alone jostling for a photograph. Exhilarated and grateful, she seized on something else Oleg had just mentioned: “What kind of food do your seamstresses recommend? I’m starving.”

  He took her by the hand and led her into another taxi, whispering a location to the driver and refusing to say a word about where they were going no matter how much she begged. It was a long drive, and she started getting nervous—where was he taking her? But then the famous Ferris wheel and Cyclone roller coaster became visible in the distance, and she turned to him and said, “Coney Island? In February?”

  “I thought you wanted to be surprised,” he replied.

  “I’m amazed,” she breathed.

  When they emerged from the cab in front of Totonno’s Pizzeria, a bitingly cold wind howled in her ears and she heard the sounds of waves crashing on the nearby beach. This was the last place she’d expected to be tonight. Inside, though, the aromas of herby tomato sauce and yeast and cheese and coal fire that greeted them were otherworldly. The air was moist and hot, and her cheeks prickled as they thawed. They sat and ordered more beer, and Oleg said something in Italian to the waiter, which promptly produced a basket of warm, oily breadsticks.

  “This might be the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten,” said Grace with her
mouth full, unable to stop herself from eating most of the basket, and then her half of the sublime pizza when it arrived.

  Oleg laughed. “I like a girl with an appetite,” he said admiringly, lighting a cigarette and leaning back against his chair, sated and smirking.

  Grace wiped her hands and mouth with the hundredth little paper napkin, and sighed with the kind of relief that only comes after great pleasure. “But I don’t think I can move now,” she laughed.

  “What a shame,” said Oleg, flicking cigarette ash into the glass tray, then leaning forward to say, low and smooth, “because I did have one more surprise in mind for later.”

  Given how full she felt, Grace considered it a sign from God that her body responded so forcefully to his suggestion. They kissed deeply the whole long taxi ride back into Manhattan, their fingers tracing lips and necks and lacing into hair, and all the way up the deserted elevator and into Oleg’s luxurious apartment, where they fell to the floor as soon as he shut the door.

  Chapter 16

  I want this part, Jay,” she said firmly. She’d invited him over for tea without Judy so that he would know this wasn’t a social call and see that she was dead serious about playing Georgie Elgin in the upcoming movie version of The Country Girl, the part Uta Hagen had won a Tony for in the Broadway production. She’d be playing a very different kind of character—no glamour, no shopping at Magnin’s or Saks, even though Edith Head would be doing the costume work, thank goodness. But unlike with Edie Doyle in On the Waterfront, Grace could see herself as Georgie Elgin.

  It would mean leaving New York for Hollywood again, just as things with Oleg were getting off the ground, but she knew in her bones that this part in this movie would be worth it—and it wasn’t because it was more likely to get her a break on Broadway. She wanted to do this movie, as a movie. It stunned her to realize that her old Broadway dream didn’t grip her in the same way anymore. Perhaps it was more mature to want the things that seemed to want you back.

  “I know you want it, Graciebird, and I think you’d be terrific, but MGM doesn’t want to keep lending you to other studios,” Jay said before taking another linzer cookie from the delicately flowered porcelain plate.

  “Then tell them to send me a script worth considering,” she replied.

  “They believe they have.”

  “They send me rubbish, Jay, and you know it. Toko-Ri was painless enough but Green Fire? Please. It’s little more than a dime-store adventure novel.”

  “Grace, none of the movies you’ve done with Hitchcock have released yet, so the movies in which you’re getting top billing haven’t reached their audience. You’re getting to be better known, but it’s all buzz and speculation until your performances are seen and reviewed. You don’t have enough clout to call the shots. Not yet.”

  “Well, that was certainly honest,” she said, a bit taken aback. Jay still looked like a blond kid who ought to be playing tennis with his buddies. But he was rapidly becoming an important player in Hollywood. He knew what he was talking about, and she chafed at his bluntness.

  “I know you wouldn’t expect anything less from me,” he said, smiling with sandy crumbs on his lips.

  “Actually, I’m more accustomed to you flattering me to get me to do what you think I should do next,” she said, without malice—it was true, after all, and she’d followed his guidance willingly enough.

  He smiled and said, “Then we appear to have reached a new place in our relationship.”

  Grace sighed, exasperated. Then she said, “Can you at least try to get me the part?”

  “I’ll do my best,” he vowed, and she believed him.

  Two days later, though, he called to say, “No dice. They want you to do Green Fire and more MGM pictures.”

  “But that’s ridiculous! They just loaned me to Paramount for Toko!”

  “Between you and me, they’re also worried about your image. Georgie Elgin is a dumpy part. No glamour.”

  “That’s absurd. As you just pointed out, I’ve only been in three movies that people have actually seen. I don’t have an image yet.”

  “You know as well as I do that you do, Grace. And they know how Hitch cast you. They’ve seen the promotional reels and the posters.”

  “I don’t want to be pigeonholed. I’m only twenty-four. If the only roles anyone’s seen me play are the fashion plates, what will I do when I’m forty?”

  “You’re not the first actress to ask that question.”

  “Stop talking like a fortune cookie, Jay, and be my agent.”

  “I am, Graciebird. It’s my job to keep you working, which means keeping you realistic. This business is a stinker for women over the age of thirty, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “I’ll show you realistic,” she said, heat rising from her belly into her cheeks. She’d had just about enough of people—men, it always seemed to be—telling her who she was and what to do. Maybe she should try being a little more like her father for once; he hadn’t gotten where he was by being bullied. “You can tell Dore Schary to change my address in his book. I’ll give up the lease on Sweetzer Avenue if I can’t do Country Girl. I have my eye on a bigger place here in Manhattan anyway, where I make far more money in television. I’ll accept their Christmas cards here.”

  “You certain about that, Graciebird?”

  “Dead,” she said, her blood throbbing briskly through her body.

  “All right,” he said, betraying no emotion. “I’ll let you know what he says.”

  * * *

  After seeing a tremendous production of the Sleeping Beauty ballet, Oleg and Grace took a quiet back table at the Persian Room, and he listened raptly as Grace told the story of her phone calls with Jay. As soon as she finished, he kissed her on the lips, then summoned the waiter and said, “Two glasses of Pol Roger, s’il vous plaît, so we may toast the Viking princess, Grace Kelly.”

  Grace giggled. “Stop.”

  “What? I admire your nerve, even if it does mean I’m going to have to fly to Los Angeles to see you.” He shuddered in mock horror at the mention of their mutual least favorite city.

  “Would you?” Grace’s pulse quickened at the idea of her and Oleg at some of her favorite Hollywood haunts, then ending their nights on Sweetzer. Oh, she’d have to get some nicer sheets and furniture now.

  “I meant what I said about finding a bigger place in New York, too,” she said, hoping he’d catch the implication.

  “A larger place would certainly suit the starlet on the move who wants to come home to her stylish pied-à-terre between award-winning films.”

  “You sound like a magazine.”

  He sighed suddenly and forlornly. “Forgive me. I did just spend the day with the editorial staff at Vogue.”

  “But that sounds like a marvelous opportunity!”

  “It is,” Oleg agreed. “But exhausting. In particular because I was up until dawn putting the finishing touches on the summer line.”

  “How do you think about summer when it’s snowing and the air smells like chestnuts?”

  “Imagination,” he said, tapping his index finger to his temple. “I’ve always been particularly skilled at shutting out the world around me and indulging my fantasies.”

  Recognizing herself in his description only made Grace love Oleg more. She felt drawn to him with her mind as well as with her body; she hadn’t truly felt that way since Don, so she knew how rare it was. Leaning toward him with her elbows and forearms on the white tablecloth in a most unmannerly posture, she cooed, “What sort of fantasies, Mr. Cassini?”

  Slowly, he moved to mirror her hunch so that their noses were inches apart across the intimate dinner table. “I’d be more than happy to show you later, Viking princess.”

  The rest of the dinner passed in a heightened state of anticipation, every touch and flirtation fizzing between them
. When at last they were in his apartment, he kissed her passionately, then pulled away almost teasingly and said, “You wanted to see some fantasies, I believe.”

  Grace opened her mouth to reply, but found that desire had drained her of wit. Oleg laughed and clasped her hand, pulling her gently into his home studio, a corner room with windows that overlooked the city. It was a picturesque winter night: streetlights and home lamps shone in a random smattering, and the sky was a deep purple, bruised with clouds that promised snow before morning.

  Oleg switched on a chandelier that cast a pinkish glow on the room. He gestured for her to sit on the chaise along one wall, while he went to his desk and picked up the stiff papers on top. He handed them to Grace and she saw a long, lean sketch of herself, attired in a white day suit with a dramatic collar on one page, then a revealing two-piece swimsuit that made her blush. On the last page, she was in a spectacular blue strapless gown, and he’d labeled it “Oscars.”

  She was about to open her mouth to say the Academy Awards were a bit of a stretch, but he beat her to it by saying firmly and huskily, “Next year.” It was entirely new, this sense of being appreciated for what she did, what she’d worked so hard to achieve, and she felt tears needle her eyes.

  Blinking them back, she whispered, “Thank you,” and he took the papers and set them gently on the floor as he climbed onto the chaise and kissed her with such tenderness, Grace felt one of those tears escape down her cheek, adding a tang of salt to the sweetness of his touch.