The Girl in White Gloves

by Kerri Maher

  Her despair and confusion about her marriage spilled over into her time with her children. She couldn’t help it, and hated herself for it. On edge all the time, she found herself yanking things like snuck cookies or off-limits toys out of Caroline’s and Albie’s hands, scolding them harshly for going against her wishes. Once, her nerves were so frayed, she actually bit Caroline’s arm to teach her not to bite Albie. She’d done it gently, but she’d still done it, and she’d said, “See what it’s like? You don’t want your brother to feel that way, do you?”

  My God, I sound just like him, she admitted to herself over glasses of wine she sipped tearfully at the end of another interminable day. In the morning, she would try to snuggle with the children in the nursery longer, read them more books, to make up for her behavior the day before. But somehow, by the end of the new day, she’d have become hopelessly impatient with them again.

  It was hard to pinpoint when things had gotten to this point between her and Rainier. There had been no one defining moment, but rather a series of incidents. No one incident on its own seemed so bad; each one had its own story and explanation. But now that she had begun to feel their cumulative effect, Grace felt exhausted from the effort of constantly trying to figure out which choice was less likely to anger Rainier. She’d married him because he made her feel loved and protected. But she felt that way so rarely now, she found she had a hard time trusting it when she did.

  She realized now that her biggest mistake had been to close her eyes on the issue of her career, and not insist on a clause in their contract that would allow her to return to acting—because now, after six years of marriage, she couldn’t even fathom bringing up such a topic. As months rolled relentlessly forward, it seemed there would never be a time other than now. Now was always the moment in which she was living—worrying, smoothing, cajoling, fussing. Now was completely overwhelming.

  Rainier didn’t comment on her choice of dress for the Onassis party, and Grace was relieved he hadn’t criticized it until she realized that neither had he told her she looked good in it. When was the last time he’d told her she was beautiful? She couldn’t remember. She looked down at the luminous aquamarine cocktail ring on her right hand, which he’d given her for their sixth anniversary just a few months ago, and thought, He loves me. He might not tell me as much as I’d like, but that’s just my womanly need; he does his best to show me in the ways he can.

  At Ari’s dazzling villa, where all the men wore dinner jackets and all the women wore gowns and heavy jewels and everyone looked their sparkling best, Grace received many compliments on her appearance, but none from her husband. Instead, as she performed her usual duty of checking in with him throughout the night to see if he needed bailing out of any conversation, a glass of water, or an excuse to leave early, she noticed his mood slipping. First, she heard him grousing about “the vise grip of the gambling racket” in Monte Carlo; an hour later it was “I’m all for the pope and his Vatican council, but I hope his reforms don’t license our children to think anything goes.”

  Toward midnight, Grace was sitting on a couch with Tina Onassis and her friend Rosalind Shand, whom she knew from England, and the three of them were discussing Jackie Kennedy’s televised tour of the White House; though the special had aired months ago, it seemed important enough that people still wanted to dissect it.

  “I think it was marvelous,” said Tina. “She managed to be the little woman showing off her house, making everyone feel welcome, even though the house was the bloody White House and she lives in it with John Heartthrob Kennedy. And the press is still raving.”

  “The Kennedys always were maestros with the press,” said Rosalind, who was several years older than Tina and Grace and had been a debutante before the war. “When Jack’s father was ambassador, he managed to get everyone to love him. For a while at least. Until his policies gave him away as a snake.”

  “Oh, Roz, England was hardly the Garden of Eden,” laughed Tina with good-natured reproach.

  Grace did not want this conversation to become about wartime politics, which she’d found Europeans enjoyed rehashing. Also, she knew Jackie a bit; they’d met years ago in New York when she was a senator’s wife, and Grace an up-and-coming star. Grace had always felt a little bad for her; Jackie had always seemed nervous. Back then, Grace hadn’t understood the beautiful brunette’s need to sound rehearsed all the time. Now she understood perfectly. “I thought she did the best she could,” Grace said to Tina and Rosalind, “though she did seem a bit coltish.”

  Rosalind snorted. “I’m sure she wasn’t given a choice. Father Kennedy put her up to it. I’d put money on it.”

  “Don’t we all have to do distasteful things to uphold the good names of our husbands’ families?” Tina mused, darting a glance in Ari’s direction.

  “And our own fathers,” added Rosalind, with a meaningful nod at Tina, whose father was a shipping magnate just like Ari. Their marriage had been a powerful alliance for the two men.

  “Yes, well,” said Grace, suddenly feeling uncomfortable with the can of worms she’d accidentally opened. She’d meant for her own comment to be a more theatrical one, about Jackie’s state of mind, not what she had or hadn’t been put up to. “She managed to do beautifully, in spite of her nerves. Maybe I only noticed it because of my own training.”

  “I think other housewives weren’t paying as much attention to her as they were to her dress and decorating skills,” said Tina.

  “Who is dressing her these days?” wondered Rosalind.

  Grace knew exactly what designer had made the first lady his muse, but she wasn’t about to open her own mouth to say it. She let Tina say the name Oleg Cassini as her heavily kohled eyes rested suggestively on Grace’s face, which she hoped was like a sphinx.

  At that very moment, Rainier perched beside Grace on the arm of the couch where she was reclining. She jumped in fright, putting a hand to her chest, feeling her heart lurch into flight.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you, darling,” said Rainier. “Or was it the mention of your old flame that jolted you?”

  “Goodness,” she said, catching her breath. She dared not comment on Oleg or Rainier’s tease—in which she’d heard quite clearly the derision.

  “We were just talking about Jackie Kennedy’s tour of the White House,” said Rosalind, jovially including Rainier in the conversation.

  “Ah, yes, John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s wife and savior,” Rainier said, arms outspread, tone sarcastic. “Everyone knows it’s a marriage of convenience, poor man. He’s always carried a torch for Marilyn Monroe, hasn’t he, darling? What was that story you told me once?”

  Poor man? Grace was overcome with a desire to throw her drink in Rainier’s face. If only getting angry at an ungallant comment was as easy in real life as it was in the movies. She’d often wished she could have the satisfaction of the on-screen slaps she’d given to Clark Gable and William Holden.

  But as usual, Grace had only herself to blame for this comment of Rainier’s, which invited her to tell a story she’d been forced to recount on so many occasions. Once Rainier mentioned it, she could never figure out how to reclaim the story, to turn it around somehow. That night, she’d had enough. Icily, she said, “Why don’t you tell it, darling?”

  Apparently oblivious to her tone, and pleased that the other women’s husbands had joined in and expanded his audience, Rainier smiled and said, “Well, John the senator was in the hospital after one of his back surgeries and Grace, being Grace, wrote to Jackie to say how sorry she was to hear of her husband’s condition and was there anything she could do.” He paused, clearly to absorb the looks of rapt concentration on Tina and Rosalind’s faces. “And so Jackie invites Grace to visit John, somewhat as a joke on him, because he’d been complaining about the homeliness of the nurses in the hospital. But Jackie astutely wondered what he would say if Grace Kelly came to call wearing a nurse’s u
niform.”

  Rainier chuckled and went on. “So Grace donned a costume from a friend, and went to call on John at the hospital, and Jackie greets her warmly. But what does Grace see when she gets to his private hospital room but a life-size poster of Ms. Monroe stuck to the ceiling above him.” Rainier burst into his familiar appreciative laughter, and Grace could hear how so much tension from the evening was sloughed off in that laugh.

  Ari and Rosalind’s husband, Bruce, joined Rainier, while Rosalind sipped her drink, poker faced, and Tina looked at Grace, eyes wide and scornful. But what else should we expect, chérie? Grace tried to meet her friend’s gaze. I know.

  “And so,” Ari asked Grace, “what did he say when he saw you?”

  “Nothing,” said Grace, making her voice as light as possible. “He was so sedated, he never even opened his eyes.”

  But Rainier and Ari and Bruce hardly heard her reply, they were laughing so hard.

  In the car on the way back to the palace, Grace looked out the window silently, responding little as Rainier recounted various conversations he’d had throughout the evening, at last coming to his triumphant rendition of the John and Marilyn story. When Grace only replied with a brief smile and a “Well done,” Rainier was silent for a minute.

  Grace could feel the air in the car go cold and dank. Let it go. Please, just let it go.

  “I suppose you think you could have told it better?” he snapped.

  “Of course not,” she replied, too quickly, too irritably. It was late; her defenses were low. She just wanted to shut the conversation down, but she was too tired—and yes, too angry—to reach for her usual smile and soothing tones.

  “It was like you set me up,” he said, “asking me to tell the story, then not even laughing at the punch line.”

  “Because I don’t think of the story as one with a punch line. It’s not a joke, Rainier,” she said, the words tumbling out before she could stop them. “I thought you understood that when I first told you what had happened.” She was sure he had. Hadn’t he said, Poor Jackie?

  He shook his head. “I’ve always seen the humor in it,” he said. “Pity you can’t.”

  Right, because I’m a humorless ice queen.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” Her whole body felt cold, and yet she was sweating. The skin of her arm felt clammy beneath her hand.

  “Of course you don’t. You never want to talk about anything anymore.”

  Was that true? It might have seemed that way to him, because it was true she didn’t want to talk about many of the things he did—his zoo, the casinos, construction in Monaco, his goddamn car collection. But it was equally true that he didn’t want to talk about anything important to her—the hospital, the gardens, starting a cultural center in Monaco that would focus on the performing arts.

  “That’s because anytime I offer an opinion on anything,” said Grace, “you tell me it’s wrong.”

  “That’s not true, and it’s not fair,” said Rainier. “You just don’t like it when I disagree with you.”

  You just did it again, Grace thought. But instead of feeling angry, she felt short of breath, as if she was being drowned from within, like a current was rising inside her, threatening to engulf her completely. Her mind cast about wildly: what was the fastest way out of this conversation?

  “I’m sure you’re right,” she said, trying hard to see his point. It was true enough that she didn’t like disagreements. She’d avoided them her whole life. Perhaps she should be more . . . what? Open? It was just so hard when she felt like she was being pushed underwater. She’d try to work on that, too. Anything to get out of this conversation.

  He didn’t reply, waiting for her to say more.

  She put a chilly, damp hand on his warm, dry fist on the black leather seat between them. “I’ll try,” she said.

  He didn’t reply, but the conversation was mercifully over.

  Silence, she told herself. Remember the old lesson.

  Silence is much better than this.

  Chapter 33

  Grace knew what it was the moment she laid eyes on it. A script. It arrived unceremoniously in a pile of mail that sat on her desk like any other solicitation or felicitation, but its manila plainness practically glowed neon to her eyes. “Her Serene Highness” was scrawled in fountain pen, in Hitch’s familiar hand.

  How could he have taken her seriously? When they had spoken on the phone the week before—just one of their periodic catch-ups, nothing premeditated about it—she’d said, “I miss the thrill of getting scripts from you, Hitch. What I wouldn’t give for one more.” She’d meant it, but hadn’t intended it as an invitation. It had been more of a lament.

  Slicing open the top of the heavy envelope, she breathed in the paper scent, the possibilities contained within, then reached in and pulled out the stack of pages.

  “MARNIE” had been typed across the cover page. Six letters. The world.

  Grace pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and began to read.

  It was pure Hitch: theft, love spurned and gone wrong, blackmail, characters driven to the point of violent madness by their obsessions. The title character was nothing like Lisa Fremont or Margot Wendice, nor was it a stretch in the direction of Georgie Elgin. Marnie was sexy and disturbed, like no one she’d ever played before, and quite possibly altogether wrong for her.

  She’d never wanted a role so badly in her life.

  The idea of doing Marnie—of saying those lines in front of a camera, working with Edith and Hitch, staying at the Chateau Marmont, feeling free—took hold of her like nothing else in years. In fact, she couldn’t remember ever wanting to do anything so much, except perhaps to leave East Falls and attend the Academy in New York.

  But the idea of even mentioning the possibility to Rainier turned her insides to liquid. All the questions he was likely to ask flooded in: Who will be your leading man? Who will take care of the children? Who will perform your duties as Princess? How do we explain it to our subjects? Is this a onetime thing, or do you want more? How dare you be so selfish?

  Grace forced herself to take a deep, steadying breath. No one knew about this yet. She had some time. And questions needed only carefully planned answers.

  She took a large pad of paper from a drawer, along with her favorite fountain pen from Uncle George, and began writing down all the questions and protests Rainier might ask. Then she began composing answers.

  When she was finished, the day was nearly over; it was time to collect Caroline from school. For the first time in years, she felt whole and full of purpose. When she rose from her desk and shrugged on her jacket and put her hair over the collar, she felt inches taller, her legs stronger.

  She could do this. She had to do this.

  * * *

  It was almost like he knew what she was going to ask. She’d set the scene as perfectly as she could, complete with the children in bed and his favorite home-cooked meal, including pie and cold American beer, in the hopes of putting him in mind of the running gag from their early correspondence—anything that could remind him of the woman he’d fallen in love with seven years ago. It had been love, hadn’t it? Whatever it was, she wanted to remind him of it.

  He seemed amused by the beer, and grateful for the steak and scalloped potatoes, as she rarely served red meat and creamy sides these days after having had two children. As he was nearing the end of his first helping, she made her prepared speech, adopting as strong and even a tone as she could.

  “I had a bit of a surprise the other day when Hitch sent me a script for his next film,” she began, and to her surprise he didn’t stop eating or look at her in any kind of suspicious manner. Somehow, this made her more nervous, but she went on.

  “I was absorbed in the script from the start. I couldn’t put it down, and I thought it would be a new sort of challenge for me. A different kind of r
ole.” As he kept eating, she sped up her talking, wondering if he was listening at all. “And now that Caroline and Albie are older, and in school, I thought perhaps it’s time for me to do this work again. Think of the tourists that flocked to Monaco after our wedding. I wonder if a return to film—good films, of course, like the ones Hitch makes—could actually help Monaco, attract the right kind of attention. And”—she paused, hoping it was all sinking in—“I would not take any time off from my duties here to make the movie. I have always taken a vacation in the spring with the children. I—or we, if you can join us—could take the vacation in California this year. I’d put up my mother and maybe also Peggy or Lizanne, and the children can play with their grandmother and cousins. I’ll only be gone a few hours a day for filming.”

  It took a few seconds after she stopped talking for him to set down his knife and fork, pat his lips with his napkin, and look at her. She searched his face for emotions—anger, fear, worry, anything—but he looked so . . . blank. Her heart was thundering in her chest, her ears, her brain.

  From the list of questions she thought he might ask, he only voiced one.

  “Who would be the other star? A man, presumably?”

  “A Scottish actor. Sean Connery. He’s not well-known in American movies yet, though I’ve heard he’s going to be in a new series of movies based on the James Bond novels.”

  “I’m not sure I agree with you about the effect this will have on Monaco,” he said, though without malice. “However, I’ve been expecting you to ask for this for a long time. I was surprised you didn’t sooner.”

  Ah, she thought, realization dawning. So this was why he didn’t seem surprised, and just let me talk. He’s been rehearsing this conversation longer than I have.