The Girl in White Gloves

by Kerri Maher

“I have no idea what you are so angry about,” said Margaret blithely. “I didn’t want all the vicious rumors about you to fester into facts that your prince might find believable. I thought it best to nip it all in the bud. I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true, did I? And I tried to cover up some of what I suspect also went on.”

  “Oh, yes, Mother, you talk about my name being ‘linked’ to famous actors, but you never come out and confirm or deny anything because you don’t actually know what happened! But anyway, that’s beside the point! You have no right to talk about my life in the press! You’re my mother,” she sobbed. “You’re supposed to be my port in the storm.”

  “I’m your mother, and I’m supposed to do what’s best for you. Your father agrees,” Margaret replied.

  I will be a different kind of mother, Grace vowed as she slammed down the phone, wondering, too, what role her father might have played in this little maneuver. Was it possible he’d put her mother up to the interviews? It was much more his style to malign her in the press. Miraculously, Rainier laughed when he saw the articles. “Mothers are not perfect,” he said with remarkable calm, and even a note of amusement. “And after all, she was politely vague about what happened between you and Gable and the rest. And she did donate her interview fee to charity.”

  Then, as she started to cry, he ran his hand soothingly up and down her back and said, “I’m glad of the opportunity to help you distance yourself from this . . . unpleasantness. You don’t have to do this alone anymore,” he said.

  Why did this make her want to cry all the more?

  * * *

  By the time she boarded the SS Constitution in New York on April 4, Grace was exhausted and almost ten pounds thinner from the stress of trying to make everyone else happy with her wedding. Life had been more than a whirlwind; it had been an absolute tornado. There were all the last-hurrah events to attend and long lists of musts to accomplish. Goodbye dinners all over New York and Hollywood. She’d packed up all of her essentials from Henry Avenue and her New York apartment—her beloved apartment, which she’d hardly gotten to live in at all. She’d filmed High Society, recorded the single for “True Love” with Bing, and attended the Academy Awards, where as last year’s winner for Best Actress, she’d had the honor of giving the Best Actor award to Ernest Borgnine for Marty, then partying one last time with her Hollywood compatriots.

  All the while she fantasized that the sea passage to Monaco would be a break of pure fun with only her best friends and family—dinners, dancing, shows, and shuffleboard—but somehow a murder of crows had been allowed on the ship. Scores of reporters set upon Grace and her most favorite people like hungry black birds upon corn. “Unless you want me to have a nervous breakdown, keep them away from me,” she hissed at Morgan Hudgins, the MGM press agent who was on the ship with them. She made sure her voice was full of an edgy, nearly hysterical vehemence, and he actually listened and did his best.

  It took some subterfuge and organizing of events in the larger of the private staterooms, but Grace did manage to relax and spend time with her friends on the eight-day journey across the Atlantic. I deserve some fun, Grace told herself after another late night of singing and charades. And she found that the presence of the press had its uses, specifically as a perfect excuse to avoid her parents, except to smile and link arms with them in the required photographs.

  On one of the final days, she invited Judybird and Maree and Peggy, all of whom would be bridesmaids, to her room for lunch and manicures. Sandwiches and iced tea and petits fours were all sitting out, as well as a buffet of red and pink lacquers.

  “You need to eat more than sandwiches and tea cakes, Graciebird,” said Judy when she arrived, a little early.

  Grace sighed. “I know. I’ve lost too much weight in the last few months.”

  “And you didn’t have any to spare!” her friend exclaimed.

  “I don’t know what to do,” said Grace, for this weight loss really did make her despair—on top of the despair that had caused it. “I blame my mother and those treacherous articles.”

  “Well, I agree that the articles were horrible and uncalled for. But . . . you can’t blame her for not taking care of yourself. You’ll be a mother yourself soon, and you’ll have to set a good example.”

  Grace sighed and thought that Judy, who was already a mother, probably had a point. Still, she said, “I hope I have at least a few months to just be married first. And I don’t know how to eat when I’m too busy to eat, or when the thought of food is”—how to even describe the way even the thought of food had triggered a gag reflex for the last few weeks?—“worse than unappealing,” she said inadequately.

  “Poor Graciebird,” Judy cooed, putting her arms around Grace, who felt impatient with herself for wanting to cry yet again. Oliver, who always seemed to know when she needed rescuing, trotted up to her and gave a little jump up her leg, and Grace scooped him up and let him lick her chin. I love you, too, she telepathed to her dog.

  Soon enough a gaggle of girlfriends had gathered around, nibbling and laughing, each of them taking a turn to ask if Grace was excited or nervous. In the distracting comfort of their company, Grace managed to eat a whole sandwich and two cakes before Peggy expertly filed her nails and painted them a lush and shiny crimson.

  That night, there was a formal dinner, and Grace grimaced when she saw that she’d been seated next to her mother amidst the gleaming silver and crystal. During the cocktail hour, she avoided her parents and focused on the friends she knew she wouldn’t see again as soon as the ship docked in Monaco and she had to take up the mantle of princess-to-be. The thought of the schedule that awaited her made her dizzy, and she shoved it out of her mind as she talked about the upcoming Red Cross Gala in Monte Carlo, her honeymoon stops around the Mediterranean on Rainier’s yacht, and her gratitude for the thirty-six women who had sewn Helen Rose’s confection of a dress into being for its trip down the aisle of St. Nicholas Cathedral in just a week’s time.

  “It’s all impossibly glamorous,” rhapsodized Muriel Gaines, an old friend of her mother’s, a bejeweled hand on her chest.

  “It is, isn’t it? I feel very lucky,” Grace agreed with what she hoped was an effusive enough tone of breathless gratitude and anticipation. Because glamorous was how it appeared to everyone else, and the last thing she wanted was to disappoint all the kind people who’d spent so much money and time to help celebrate her marriage. In spite of the three-ring circus it had become, Grace occasionally caught breathless glimpses of how poignant and magical it all appeared.

  When it was time for the first course, Grace found her seat and busied herself with her napkin and water glass.

  “You can’t avoid me forever,” her mother said quietly, leaning over and speaking low so only Grace could hear. “I’m not even sure what you’re so angry about. Haven’t you gotten everything you wanted?”

  Grace looked into her mother’s eyes, searching for some note of irony, the tiniest recognition that maybe her second daughter wasn’t entirely happy. If it was too much to admit that the interview she’d given was in bad taste, maybe her mother could at least see that Grace was suffering? And reach out to comfort her?

  But Grace saw none of that sympathy there. Am I too good an actress? Have I managed to fool even my mother into believing this is a fairy tale?

  “I’m not angry, Mother,” said Grace, and she was surprised to find it was true. “I’m . . . afraid.” The truth of the word stunned her as soon as it was out of her mouth.

  “You? Afraid?” her mother said, eyes wide with genuine surprise. “How can the only child of John Brendan Kelly who never did his bidding be afraid?”

  Oh, my God, Grace thought, her mouth open not in reply but in utter shock. All the times she’d stood on stages, wishing and hoping, and all along . . . her mother had seen?

  And done nothing? Nothing to take the sting out of her father’s
words? Nothing to acknowledge how hard it had been for her to be Grace Kelly?

  I’m sailing away from all this right now, she thought, and the relief that thought brought her was so great, it temporarily lifted the weight from her shoulders, allowed her to breathe air into her tightened chest.

  “Yes, Mother, I’m afraid,” Grace managed to whisper.

  Her mother put her right hand on Grace’s left, covering her engagement ring. “You’ll get through it. You always do,” Margaret said, and Grace heard the thickness in her mother’s voice, saw the glassiness in her eyes. Grace felt her heart burst in her chest. Then, before she could respond, Margaret turned away and said, almost to the menu, “You’ll have plenty of time to rest when you’re a princess.”

  Chapter 29

  When Grace stepped off the SS Constitution with Oliver cradled in one arm so the other was free to wave to the thousands of people who had gathered at the dock and in the streets to get a glimpse of their new Princess, Grace was overcome with an uncharacteristic bout of shyness. These are my subjects, she thought, and the idea was surreal. The sea of applauding, waving people looked more like an audience. She preferred to think of them in this familiar way; it helped her smile back at them from under the protective wide brim of her hat.

  Moments later, she was by Rainier’s side in his yacht, the Deo Juvante II, and the crowd cheered louder, which she’d never have thought possible. “Darling, I am so happy to see you,” she said, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. More frantic applause. It was beyond her wildest expectations. They were two people getting married, for heaven’s sake! It wasn’t like they’d just done the unabridged Hamlet.

  He kissed her as well, though she could tell it was all performance and left her feeling unmoored. She wanted desperately to lean on him and whisper how much she wanted to escape. But before she could make another move, he waved jubilantly to the crowd and spun the yacht into a foamy circle. The sound of the motor, and the crowd, the sudden, choppy movements of the boat in the water, nearly made Grace double over and wretch. “Please, Rainier,” she said, and though she shouted it, she doubted anyone else heard, “steady the ship or I’ll be sick.”

  He did as she asked, then said as he slipped an arm around her, “We’ll have to limber up your sea legs, Princess. This is Monaco, after all.”

  Then he looked back out at the cheering audience with as much pride as if he had played Shakespeare’s Danish prince, and said as he waved, “And see, they love you! We wouldn’t want to disappoint them.”

  “No, of course not,” she said, linking one arm through his and waving out at them by his side, thinking to herself that this was the most thunderous reception she’d ever received, and for work that had next to nothing to do with her.

  * * *

  And so began a week of such decadent lunches, dinners, dances, and shows that Grace reflected to Judybird and Jaybird that even the ancient Romans had nothing on Monaco. When her father remarked on the bottles of Cristal and enormous baskets of fruit and cheese and candy in every guest room of the opulent Hôtel de Paris, “Now I know where the dowry went,” Grace couldn’t help but laugh.

  “See, Daddy,” she teased back, “I told you Monaco was in the black.”

  She felt she must smile and compliment it all, even if the Irish Catholic part of her that had grown up wearing her sisters castoffs occasionally thought, This is too much. She genuinely loved the flowers. Her own guest quarters of the palace looked like the inside of her favorite New York florist, Max Schling—festive sprays of exotic blooms as well as more familiar ones in artful arrangements sat in gleaming bowls and vases on practically every surface. The colorful petals and leaves had the effect of enlivening the palace, which had seemed so dark and staid on her first visit. The flowers and the fact that every piece of silver, every bronze or gold statue and sconce, had been polished to within an inch of its life. And now that she knew it was to be her home, Grace was glad of the palace’s modest scale. She remembered how uncharitably she’d thought of its size, comparing it unfairly to Versailles, on her first visit when she’d been annoyed at everything from the French workers’ strike to Rainier’s lateness (he’d never been late again!). She couldn’t imagine living anywhere larger than the Palace of Monaco. Even its current size filled her with trepidation—she was to be mistress of all this?

  At every event, Grace tried to do something personal, like breaking away from a group of well-wishers to accompany Judy to the relative calm of the ladies’ lounge in order to wish her and Jay a happy anniversary and apologize profusely for not being able to do more than express her felicitations in words. Though Judy was quick to tell her that she was being ridiculous, that in her place she wouldn’t have remembered what day it was at all let alone that it was someone else’s wedding anniversary, Grace felt it necessary to hold on to such small moments or else she’d get utterly swept away by the high tide of emotion and extravagance. Even the cars in Monaco were extraordinary—only the finest Rolls-Royces, Mercedes, and Bentleys drove the streets. And the fashion! Even on Fifth Avenue, she’d never seen such a high concentration of couture. She knew from her previous visit, and from the reading she’d done about the principality, that it had long been a playground for the wealthiest people who had millions to throw away in the casino and jewelry stores, but the wedding had amplified the ostentation by a magnitude of at least one hundred. It was mind-boggling that she was supposed to be Rainier’s partner here, ruling over this extraordinary place. If she let herself think about it too long, she started to feel shaky in the knees and light in the head. She clung to what felt real—her friends and their shared history.

  The most real moment she shared with Rainier was their last Tuesday night as unmarried individuals; soon they would be one, a single unit. After another formal dinner, at which her stomach simply said no to every creamy, glistening item on her plate, he laced his fingers through hers and lifted her hand to his mouth to kiss her hand. “Meet me in the chapel in an hour,” he said quietly, referring to the small church in honor of St. John the Baptist at the west end of the palace.

  She changed into a simple cotton skirt and sweater with her horn-rimmed glasses because she was so tired, she could hardly see at all, and he arrived wearing khakis and a white shirt under a navy sweater. His dark hair was freshly washed, and a bit tousled and wet. He looked so handsome that way, and she looked forward to seeing him be more casual in the future. She’d had about enough of tuxedos and ball gowns. He kissed her hello, then took her hand and said quietly, “I want to show you something.”

  They got into his Mercedes convertible, with the top up for privacy, and he began driving. “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “I want to show you La Turbie. It is a true kind of place, salt of the earth. No yachts and nonsense. It’s where we might want to consider raising our children.”

  The headlights of his car lit the way up the precipitous climb out of Monaco. Within minutes, the principality was far below them, and they were in France. The road was narrow and harrowing. She wasn’t even driving, and she didn’t dare take her eyes off the road, knowing that if she looked out or down, she might actually faint from the unprotected height.

  “I don’t know how you drive these roads,” she said, trying to breathe slowly to calm herself.

  “I grew up doing it.” He shrugged. “You’ll get used to it in no time, I’m sure. Did you not actually drive that car in To Catch a Thief?”

  “Goodness, no,” she said. “That was all done in a studio with the scenery added in later. For the picnic scene, we were transported in very safe cars that drove like snails at my request.”

  “Am I driving slowly enough for you?”

  “Yes,” she lied, for even a walking pace might have been too much for her that night.

  Fortunately, the drive to the charming medieval town of La Turbie was short. Rainier parked in front of a little bistro with a worn
blue-and-white awning and led her inside. The man behind the tidy but aging wood bar, Guy, greeted him warmly, and they chatted in French, laughing and joking about what sounded like Guy’s son and daughter. Rainier introduced Grace to Guy, who bid her welcome and congratulations in French. She replied as best she could with the high school French she’d lately revived with a few lessons in New York. She’d need more earnest tutoring soon.

  They sat at the bar and drank espresso and shared a piece of a delicious tarte aux prunes before Rainier took Grace’s hand again. After he grabbed a flashlight out of the trunk of his car, they walked along the edge of the steep cobbled streets, past the town’s church, until they reached an ancient and still ruined arch. The soft silence of the town was heaven after the hoopla of Monaco. The only sounds were the occasional clinks of dishes or a baby’s cries in the distance.

  It was night, but clear, and so the moon and stars lit up the town in a kind of glowing violet light. Rainier hadn’t yet turned on the flashlight, so all she could see were the general contours of buildings, shrubs, and climbing flowers. At a grand arch, he finally switched it on and said quietly, reverentially, “This is the Trophée des Alpes. It was built to celebrate Emperor Augustus’s conquering of the Alps six years before Christ. The stone came from eight hundred miles away. Can you imagine?”

  Fingers still intertwined, she followed him and the beam of his light as it moved slowly over the craggy surface of the huge Roman monument. Her eyes traveled up and up, taking in the crumbling magnificence of the site. “Was it bombed in the war?” she asked.

  “Miraculously, no. It was ruined over centuries, of course, but some enterprising philanthropists in the twenties began restoring it. It’s quite an important piece of history.”

  “I can see that,” she said, taking in the grandeur of the columns far above her, the round shape atop the enormous stone base. There would have been an impressive dome there nearly two thousand years ago.